CATH. 





























' 4 ■ i * ** ^ 

• .. . , * 









































































































.• ' .;••' •■ 3 M, •. * v 









/ 








1 . H 































z "• 




v 










% 




























* 


~ Wk wr* 

' 




^ o 













FOREIGN CONSPIRACY 


AGAINST THE 


LIBERTIES OF THE UNITED -STATES 


THE NUMBERS OF 

BRUTUS, 

» 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW-YORK OBSERVER 


EEVISED AND CORRECTED WITH NOTES, BY THE AUTHOR. 

• • 


Oft fire is without smoke, 

And peril without show. 

Spencer. 



»» » 


NEW-YORK : 

LEAVITT, LORD & CO., 182 BROADWAY, 
G. & C. CARVILL & CO., 108 BROADWAY, 
BOSTON— CROCKER & BREWSTER, 

47 Washington-street. 


Y 


t 


4 BX 
1 160 


Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 
1835, by Leavitt, Lord & Co., in the Clerk’s Office of the 
District Court of the Southern District of New-York. 

• • 


&i>FT 


West & Trow, Printers. 








RECOMMENDATIONS. 


New-York, Jan. 1, 1835. 

To Messrs, Leavitt, Lord & Co., 

Gentlemen,— Learning that you are about to publish in a 
small volume, the articles, signed Brutus, (which recently 
appeared in the New-York Observer, shewing that a conspi- 
racy is formed against the United States by the Papal powers 
of Europe,) the undersigned, who read those articles with in- 
terest, have great satisfaction in expressing their approbation 
of your undertaking. These articles are written by a gentle- 
man of intelligence and candor, who has resided in the south 
of Europe, and enjoyed the best opportunities for acquaintance 
with the topics on which he writes. 

While we disapprove of harsh, denunciatory language to- 
wards Roman Catholics, their past history, and the fact that 
they every where act together, as if guided by one mind, ad- 
monish us to be jealous of their influence, and to watch with 
unremitted care all their movements in relation to our free in- 
stitutions. As this work is now to be published in a portable 
form, and with additional notes by the author, we hope it may 
obtain an extensive circulation and a careful perusal. 

Yours, with friendly regard, 

James Milnor," 
Thomas De Witt, 

N. Bangs, 

Jonathan Going. 

*** The gentlemen who have signed the above letter rep- 
resent four Protestant denominations, viz. the Episcopal, 
Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist. 


Extract from Zion’s Herald, a Methodist paper published in Boston, Mass. 

“ Foreign Conspiracy. — We commence to-day publishing 
this interesting series. The author is an American, who has 
resided for a long time in Italy and Austria. The same day 
that we had decided to publish them, we received a note, 
signed by Rev. Messrs. Lindsey, Fillmore, Kent, and Stevens, 
recommending and requesting that they should appear in the 
Herald.” 







CONTENTS 


Chapter I Page 13 

The first impressions of the improbability of a Foreign con- 
spiracy considered — Present political condition of Europe 
favors an enterprise against our institutions — The war of 
opinions commenced ; Despotism against liberty — The 
vicissitudes of this war— Official declarations of the des- 
potic party against all liberty — Necessity to the triumph 
of Despotism that American liberty should be destroyed 
— The kind of attack most likely to be adopted from the 
nature of the contest— Reasons why our institutions are 
obnoxious to European governments — Has the attack 
commenced? Yes! by Austria — Through a Society called 
the St. Leopold Foundation— Ostensibly religious in its 
design. 

Chapter II 25 

Political character of the Austrian government— The old 
avowed enemy of Protestant liberty— Character of the 
people of Austria, slaves — Character of Prince Metternich, 
the arch contriver of plans to stifle liberty — These enemies 
of all liberty suddenly anxious for the civil and religious 
liberty of theUnited States — The absurdity of their osten- 
sible design exposed — The avowed objects of Austria in the 
Leopold Foundation — Popery the instrument to act upon 
our institutions. 

Chapter III . .33 

Popery in its political not its religious character the object 
of the present examination — The fitness of the instrument 
to accomplish the political designs of despotism— The 
principles of a Despotic and a Free government briefly con- 
trasted — Despotic principles fundamental in Popery r— In- 
fallible testimony adduced — Papal claims of divine right 
and plenitude of power — Abject principles of Popery illus- 
trated from the Russian Catechism — Protestantism from its 
birth in favor of Liberty — Luther on the 4th of July attacks 

1 * 


6 


CONTENTS. 


the presumptuous claim of divine right— Despotism and 
Popery united against liberty of conscience, liberty of opin- 
ion, and liberty of the press — The anti-republican declara- 
tions of the present Pope Gregory XVI. 

Chapter IV 45 

The cause of Popery and Despotism identical— A striking 
difference between Pop?ry and Protestantism as they ex- 
ist in this country— American Protestantism not controlled 
by foreign Protestantism — American Popery entirely un- 
der foreign control— Jesuits, the foreign agents of Austria, 
bound by the strongest ties of interest to Austrian policy, 
not American — Their dangerous power, unparalleled in 
any Protestant sect — Our free institutions opposed in their 
nature to the arbitrary claims of Popery — Duplicity to be 
expected— Political dangers to be apprehended from Popish 
organization— American Popery uncontrolled by Ameri- 
cans, or in America — Managed in a foreign country by a 
foreign power for political purposes — Consequences that 
may easily result from such a state of things. 

Chapter V 51 

Points in our political system which favor this foreign at- 
tack— Our toleration of all religious systems — Popery op- 
posed to all toleration— Charge of intolerance substantia- 
ted— The organization of Popery in America connected 
with and strengthened by foreign organization— Without 
a parallel among Protestant sects — Great preponderance 
of Popish strength in consequence — The divisions among 
Protestant sects nullifies their attempts at combination — 
Taken advantage of by Jesuits — Popish duplicity illustra- 
ted in its opposite alliances in Europe with despotism, 
and in America with democracy — The laws relating to 
immigration and naturalization favor foreign attack 
— Emigrants being mostly Catholic and in entire subjec- 
tion to their priests— No remedy provided by our laws for 
this alarming evil. 

Chapter VI 61 

The evil from immigration further considered— Its political 
bearings — The influence of emigrants at the elections — 
This influence concentrated in the priests— The Priests 
must be propitiated ; by what means— This influence ea- 
sily purchased by the demagogue— The unprincipled cha- 
racter of many of our politicians favor this foreign attack 
—Their bargain for the suffrages of this priest-led band— 
A church and state party- -The Protestant sects obnoxious 
to no such bargaining— the newspaper press favors this 
foreign attack; from its want of independence, and its ti- 
midity— An anti-republican fondness for titles, favors this 


CONTENTS. 


7 


foreign attack — Cautious attempts of Popery to dignify 
its emissaries and to accustom us to their high-sounding 
titles— A mistaken notion on the subject of discussing re- 
ligious opinion in the secular journals, favors this foreign 
attack— Political designs not to be shielded from attack 
because cloaked by Religion. 

Chapter VII 73 

The 'political character of this ostensibly religious enter- 
prise proved from the letters of the Jesuits now in this 
country— Their antipathy to private judgment— Their 
anticipations of a change in our form of government — 
Our government declared too free for the exercise of their 
divine rights — Their political partialities — Their cold ac- 
knowledgment of the generosity, and liberality, and hos- 
pitality of our government — Their estimate of our condi- 
tion contrasted with their estimate of that of Austria — 
Their acknowledged allegiance and servility to a foreign 
master— Their sympathies with the oppressor, and not 
with the oppressed— Their direct avowal of political de- 
sign. 

Chapter VIII 83 

Some of the means by which Jesuits can already operate 
politically in the country — By mob discipline — By priest 
police — Its great danger— Already established— Proofs 
— Priests already rule the mob — Nothing in the principles 
of Popery to prevent its interference in our elections— Po- 
pery interferes at the present day in the political concerns 
of other countries— Popery the same in our country— It 
interferes in our elections — In Michigan— In Charleston, 
S. C. — In New-York— Popery a political despotism cloak- 
ed under the name of Religion— It is Church and State 
embodied— Its character at head-quarters in Italy — Its 
political character stripped of its religious cloak. 

Chapter IX 95 

Evidence enough of conspiracy adduced to create great 
alarm— The cause of liberty universally demands that we 
should awake to a sense of danger— An attack is made 
which is to try the moral strength of the Republic — The 
mode of defence that might be consistently recommended 
by Austrian Popery— A mode now in actual operation in 
Europe — Contrary to the entire spirit of American Protes- 
tantism — True mode of defence — Popery must be opposed 
by antagonist institutions— Ignorance must be dispelled — 
Popular ignorance of all Papal countries— Popery the na- 
tural enemy of general education — Popish efforts to spread 
education in the United States delusive. 


CONTENTS. 


8 

Chapter X 105 

All classes of citizens interested in resisting the efforts of 
Popery — The unnatural alliance of Popery and Democra- 
cy exposed — Religious liberty in danger — Specially in the 
keeping of the Christian community — They must rally for 
its defence— The secular press has no sympathy with Prot- 
estants ; in this struggle it is opposed to them — The Poli- 
tical character of Popery ever to be kept in mind and ope 
posed — It is for the Papist not the Protestant to separat- 
his religious from his political creed — Papists ought to be 
required publicly and formally and officially to renounce 
foreign allegiance and anti-republican customs. 

Chapter XI 115 

The question what is the duty of the Protestant communi- 
ty? considered — Shall there be an Anti-Popery Union 1 
The strong manifesto that might be put forth by such a 
union — Such a political union discarded as impolitic and 
degrading to the Protestant community — Golden opportu- 
nity for showing the moral energy of the republic — The 
lawful and efficient weapons of this contest — To be used 
without delay. 

Chapter XII 127 

The Political duty of American citizens at this crisis. 


Erratum. — Page 13, last line, for which read while. 


PREFATORY REMARKS. 


The following* Numbers written for the New-York 
Observer in the beginning of the year 1834, and during 
several weeks of confinement by indisposition, have 
been, perhaps, more extensively copied into the religious 
journals of the different Christian denominations than 
any communications, (with perhaps a single exception,) 
of the same extent since the establishment of religious 
newspapers ; and although the subject matter is almost 
altogether political, giving proofs of a serious foreign con- 
spiracy against the government, yet the writer is not 
aware that a single secular journal in the United States 
has taken the pains to investigate the matter, or even 
to ask if indeed there may not be good grounds for be- 
lieving it true. The silence of the secular press on a 
subject which has roused the attention of so large a body 
of the Protestant community may indeed be accounted 
for in part, perhaps altogether, from the all engrossing 
election contests which have agitated the country from 
one extremity of the land to the other ; for the writer 
would certainly be very reluctant to adopt the belief, 
which has repeatedly been urged upon him by many, 
that the secular journals dare not attack Popery ; he will 
not believe that dare not ever stood in the way of the 


10 


PREFATORY REMARKS. 


duty of any patriotic independent conductor of the 
American press.* 

At the solicitation of many citizens without distinc- 
tion of religious denomination or of political party, the 
writer has consented to collect the numbers into a pam- 
phlet, adding notes illustrative of many matters which 
could not so well have been introduced into the columns 
of a newspaper. 

That a vigorous and unexampled effort is making by 
the despotic governments of Europe to cause Popery to 
overspread this country, is a fact too palpable to be con- 
tradicted. Did not official documents lately published, 
put this fact beyond dispute, yet the writer had personal 
evidence sufficient to convince him of the fact and of 
the 'political object of the enterprise, while residing in 
Italy in the years 1830 — 31, from conversations with 
nobles and gentlemen of different countries, with the 
officers of various foreign governments, visiting and 
resident in the Roman and Austrian states, and with 
priests and other ecclesiastics of the Roman faith. 
Sometimes it was hinted to him as a check to too san- 
guine anticipations of the triumph of the experiment of 
our democratic republican government ; sometimes it 
was told him by the former class in a tone of exultation 
that a cause was in operation which would surely over- 
throw our institutions and gradually bring us under a 
form of government less obnoxious to the pride, and less 
dangerous to the existence, of the antiquated despotic 
systems of Europe. In addition to these hints to the 
writer, concerning the efforts making by the governments 
of Europe to carry Popery through all our borders, other 

* A friend to whom this part was read smiled, and said 
“ you are sufficiently guarded in your language, but how many 
patriotic , independent conductors of the American press are 
there 1 Can you name one/?” 


PREFATORY REMARKS. 


11 


American travellers will testify to similar hints made to 
them. By one I am permitted to say, that the celebrated 
naturalist, the late Baron Cuvier, known also as a zeal- 
ous Protestant, inquired of him with marks of concern, 
if it were indeed true that Popery had made such progress 
in the United States, as to cause the exultation (which 
it seems was no secret) among the legitimates of Europe. 
And again, that a distinguished member of one of the 
Protestant German embassies, in Rome also made similar 
inquiries of him, having heard much boasting of the pro- 
gress of Popery in the United States, adding this perti- 
nent remark, “ they will he hammer or nails , Sir , they will 
• 'persecute , or he persecuted” These facts may be of so 
much importance in aid of the other proofs of a conspira- 
cy which these numbers unfold, as to show that among 
the various higher classes of Europe the enterprise of a 
Popish crusade in this country is not only a subject of 
notoriety, but is viewed with great interest, and is con- 
sidered as having a most important political bearing. 

In the following numbers the writer has chosen to 
rest the evidence of conspiracy mainly on official docu- 
ments published in Vienna, because they have been 
translated and published,* and are within the reach of 
any citizen of the country who chooses more closely to 
examine them. He has also availed himself of facts in 
the operations of Popish agents in this country, so far as 
their workings have been occasionally revealed. 

The writer will add in conclusion, that he writes not 
in the interest of a sect or a party, for the question of 
Popery is not identified with either political party. He 
has lived too long in foreign countries to be able to iden- 
tify himself with the local interests of mere party at 

*In the New- York Observer, of the months of January, 
February, 1834. 


12 


PREFATORY REMARKS. 


home, whether in religion or politics. The great demo - 
cratic features of his country’s institutions, as contradis- 
tinguished from the despotic, monarchical and aristocratic 
systems of Europe, were admired by him as they appeared 
more boldly relieved, viewed from abroad in such striking 
contrast to all around him ; and he is thoroughly persua- 
ded that these democratic institutions, if suffered to have 
their unobstructed course, unobstructed except by the 
natural checks of education and religion actively and 
universally diffused and sustained, are more favorable to 
civil liberty and to the final triumph of truth, and conse- 
quently to human happiness, than any other civil insti- 
tutions in the world. The writer entertaining these 
views has deemed it an imperative duty, at any sacrifice* 
to warn his countrymen, of a subtle enemy to the demo- 
cracy of the country, and to conjure them as they value 
their civil and religious institutions, to watch the Protean 
shapes of Popery, to suspect and fear it most when it 
allies itself to our interests in the guise of a friend. Mis- 
trust of all that Popery does , or affects to do, whether as a 
friend or foe in any part of the country, is the only feeling, 
that true charity, universal charity, allows us to indulge. 

New-York, January , 1835. 


FOREIGN CONSPIRACY 


AGAINST THE 

LIBERTIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 


CHAPTER I. 

The first impression of the improbability of foreign conspiracy 
considered — Present political condition of Europe favors an 
enterprise against our institutions — The war of opinions 
commenced — Despotism against Liberty— The vicissitudes of 
this w'ar— The official declaration of the despotic parly 
against all libe ty — Necessity to the triumph of despotism 
that American liberty should be destroyed— The kind of 
attack upon us most likely to be adopted from the nature of 
the contest— Particular reasons why our institutions are 
obnoxious to the European governments — Has the at'ack 
commenced? Yes! by Austria — Through a Society called 
the St Leopold Foundation — Ostensibly religious, in its 
designs. 

Does this heading seem singular ? What, it 
will be said, is it at all probable that any nation 
or combination of nations, can entertain designs 
against us, a people so peaceable, and at the same 
time so distant? Knowing the daily increasing re- 
sources of this country in all the means of defence 
against foreign aggression, how absurd in the nations 
abroad to dream of a conquest on this soil ? Let 
me, nevertheless, ask attention, which I humbly offer 

2 


14 WAR OF DESPOTISM AND LIBERTY. 

my reasons for believing that a conspiracy exists, 
that its plans are already in operation, and that we 
are attacked in a vulnerable quarter which cannot be 
defended by our ships, our forts, or our armies. 

Who among us is not aware that a mighty strug- 
gle of opinion is in our days agitating all the nations 
of Europe ; that there is a war going on between 
despotism on one side, and liberty on the other.* 
And with what deep anxiety should Americans 
watch the vicissitudes of the conflict. Having long 
since achieved our own victory in the great strife be- 
tween arbitrary power and freedom, having demon- 
strated by successful experiment before the world, 
the safety, the happiness, the superior excellence of 
a republican government, a government proceeding 
from the people as the true source of power ; en- 
joying in overflowing abundance the rich blessings 
of such a government, must we not regard with 
more than common interest the efforts of mighty 
nations to break away from the prejudices, and 
habits, and sophistical opinions of ages of darkness, 
and struggling to attain the same glorious privile- 
ges of rational freedom ? But there are other mo- 
tives than that of curiosity, or of mere sympathy 
with foreign trouble, that should arouse our solici- 
tude, in the fearful crisis which has at length arriv- 


* See Note A, Appendix. 


AMERICA INTERESTED IN THE WAR. 15 

ed, a crisis which the prophetic tongue of a great 
British statesman* long since foretold, the war of 
opinion , threatening the world with a more frightful 
sacrifice of human life, than history in any of its 
blood-stained pages records. Happily separated by 
an ocean-barrier from the great arena where the 
physical action of this bloody drama is to be per- 
formed, we are secure from the immediate physical 
effects of the strife; but we cannot remain unaffect- 
ed by the result. 

Of European wars arising from the craving of 
personal ambition, from thirst for national glory, 
from desire of territorial increase, or from other lo- 
cal causes, we might safely be ignorant both of 
cause and result. No armed bands of a conqueror 
flushed with victory, could give us a moment’s 
alarm. But in a war of opinions, in a war of prin- 
ciples, in which the very foundations of government 
are subverted, and the whole social fabric upturned, 
we cannot, if we would, be uninterested in the result. 
Principles are not bounded by geographical limits. 
Oceans present to them no barriers. All of prin- 
ciple that belongs to despotism throughout the 
world, whether in the iron systems of Russia and 
Austria ; or the scarcely less civilized system of 
China, and all of principle that belongs to pure 
* Mr. Canning. 


16 


VICISSITUDES OF THE WAR. 


American freedom in the United States, or in the 
mixed systems of Britain, France, and some other 
European states, are in this great contest arrayed 
in opposition. The triumph of the one or the other 
principle, whether in the field of battle, or in the se- 
cret councils of the cabinet, or the congress of minis- 
ters, or the open debate, produces effects wherever so- 
ciety exists. The recent convulsions in Europe should 
not pass unheeded by Americans. The three days’ 
revolution of France, the reform in Britain on the 
side of liberty ; the suppressed revolutions of Italy 
and Poland on the side of despotism ; the yet doubt- 
ful victory of the two principles now in contest in 
Portugal and Spain ;* the crooked diplomacy, the 
contradictory measures, the faithless promises of the 
despotic cabinets, all show that the war of principles 
has indeed commenced, and that Europe is agitated 
to its very centre with the anxieties of the contest. 

No open annual message reveals frankly to all 
the world the true internal condition of the oppress- 
ed nations of Europe. From the well guarded 
walls of the secret council chamber of the imperial 
power, documents seldom escape to show us the 
strength of the opposing 'principle . Despotism 
glosses over all its oppressions. The people are 


1834. 


* These numbers were written in January and February, 


DECLARATIONS OF THE HOLY ALLIANCE. 


17 


always happy under the paternal sway. They 
that plead for liberty are always enemies of public 
order. “Order reigns in Warsaw,” was the pro- 
clamation that told the world that despotism had 
triumphed over Poland, and none now may know 
the number of her sons of freedom still at large, 
still unexiled to the mines of Siberia ; yet it is great ; 
for Russia, and Prussia, and Austria, have leagued 
anew against unconquerable Poland ; and the agony 
of determination, the desperate resolution which the 
Russian Autocrat has just uttered, tells the secret 
of the yet unvanquished spirit of Polish patriots, and 
at the same time discloses the plot of mighty efforts , 
of united efforts , of persevering efforts utterly to 
extinguish liberty. 

“ As long as I live,” says the Emperor, “ I will 
oppose a will of iron to the progress of liberal opin- 
ions. The present generation is lost, but we must 
labor with zeal and earnestness to improve the spirit 
of that to come. It may require an hundred years ; 
I am not unreasonable, I give you a whole age, but 
you must work without relaxation.” 

This is language without ambiguity, bold, un- 
disguised ; it is the clear official disclosure of the 
determination of the Holy Alliance against liberty. 
It proclaims unextinguishable hatred, a will of iron. 
There is no compromise with liberty, a hundred 
2 * 


18 


WE MUST EXPECT THEIR ATTACK. 


years of efforts unrelaxed, if necessary, shall be put 
forth to crush it for ever. Its very name must be 
blotted from the earth. What ! and is there a Holy 
Alliance, a “ union of Christian princes,” leagued to 
extinguish the kindling sparks of liberty in Europe ? 
and will they make no effort to quench the great 
altar-fires, that blaze in their strength in the tem- 
ples of this land of liberty ? An oversight like this 
would seem to be too palpable for the wisdom of the 
despotic cabinets to commit. This conquest must 
be achieved, or liberty will never die in Europe. 

With declarations before us, thus officially put 
forth by despotism, of such exterminating hostility 
to liberty, is it not possible that an attack on us may 
be made from a quarter, and in a shape little expect- 
ed? Should we not at least look about us? Na- 
tions may be attacked and conquered too, with 
other weapons than the sword. The diplomatic pen, 
as England can testify, has often wrested from her 
that territory which her sword had won. W e need 
not look, therefore, to the ports of Europe to see if 
fleets are gathering. We are safe enough from 
ships. Nor need we fear diplomacy, for we have 
“ entangling alliances with none.” Where, then, 
shall we look ? What shape would attack be likely 
to assume ? Let the nature of the contest aid us in 
tae inquiry. It is the war of opinion ; the war of 


REASONS OF THEIR HOSTILITY. 


19 


antagonist principles : the war of despotism against 
liberty. But how can this contest be carried on in 
this country? We have not the warring opinions to 
set in array against each other. One principle is 
certainly absent. We have no party in favor of 
despotism. This party is to be created. If then 
a scheme can be devised for sowing the seeds, and 
rearing the plants of despotism, that is the scheme 
which would find favor with the Holy Alliance, to 
subserve its designs against American liberty. 

Is it asked, Why should the Holy Alliance feel 
interested in the destruction of transatlantic liberty ? 
I answer, the silent but powerful and increasing in- 
fluence of our institutions on Europe, is reason 
enough. The example alone of prosperity which 
we exhibit in such strong contrast to the enslaved, 
priest-ridden, tax-burdened despotisms of the old 
world, is sufficient to keep those countries in per- 
petual agitation. How can it be otherwise? Will 
a sick man, long despairing of cure, learn that there 
is a remedy for him, and not desire to procure it ? 
Will one born to think a dungeon his natural home, 
learn through his grated bars, that man may be 
free ; and not struggle to obtain his liberty ? And 
what do the people of Europe behold in this country ? 
They witness the successful experiment of a free 
government ; a government of the jpeojple ; without 


20 INFLUENCE OF OUR FREE INSTITUTIONS. 

rulers de jure divino, (by divine right :) having no 
hereditary privileged classes ; a government exhi- 
biting good order and obedience to law, without an 
armed police and secret tribunals ; a government 
out of debt ; a people industrious, enterprising, 
thriving in all their interests ; without monopolies ; 
a people religious without an establishment ; moral 
and honest without the terrors of the confessional 
or the inquisition ; a people not harmed by the un- 
controlled liberty of the press, and freedom of opin- 
ion ; a people that read what they please, and 
think, and judge, and act for themselves ; a people 
enjoying the most unbounded security of person and 
property ; among whom domestic conspiracies are 
unknown ; where the poor and rich have equal jus- 
tice ; a people social and hospitable ; exerting all 
their energies in schemes of public and private ben- 
efit without other control than mutual forbearance. 
A government so contrasted in all points with abso- 
lute governments, must, and does engage the intense 
solicitude, both of the rulers and people of the old 
world. Every revolution that has occurred in 
Europe for the last half century, has been in a great- 
er or less degree the consequence of our own glo- 
rious revolution. The great political truths there 
promulgated to the world, are the seed of the dis- 
orders and conspiracies, and revolutions of Europe, 


WE ABE ACTUALLY ATTACKED BY AUSTHIA. 21 

from the first French revolution, down to the pres- 
ent time. They are the throes of the internal life, 
breaking the bands of darkness with which super- 
stition and despotism have hitherto bound the nations 
struggling into the light of a new age. Can despo- 
tism know all this, and not feel it necessary to do 
something to counteract the evil ? 

. Let us look around us. Is despotism doing any 
thing in this country 1 It becomes us to be jealous. 
We have cause to expect an attack, and that it will 
be of a kind suited to the character of the contest, 
the war of opinion. Yes ! despotism is doing some- 
thing. Austria is now acting in this country. 
She has devised a grand scheme. She has orga- 
nized a great plan for doing something here, which 
she , at least, deems important. She has her Jesuit 
missionaries travelling through the land ; she has 
supplied them with money, and has furnished a 
fountain lor a regular supply. She had expended a 
year ago more than seventy-four thousand dollars'm 
furtherance of her design !* These are not surmises. 
They are facts. Some official documents giving the 
constitution and doings of this Foreign Society , 
have lately made their appearance in the New- 
York Observer, and have been copied extensively 

* From the best authority, I have just learned, Dec. 1834, 
that $100,000 have been received from Austria, within two 
years I 


22 


WE ARE ATTACKED BY AUSTRIA 


into other journals of the country. This society 
having ostensibly a religious object, has been for 
nearly four years at work in the United States, with- 
out attracting, out of the religious world, much at- 
tention to its operations. The great patron of this 
apparently religious scheme is no less a personage 
than the Emperor of Austria, The Society is call- 
ed the St. Leopold Foundation. It is organized in 
Austria. The field of its operations is these Uni- 
ted States. It meets and forms its plans in Vien- 
na. Prince Metternich has it under his watchful 
care. The Pope has given it his apostolic benedic- 
tion, and “ His Royal Highness, Ferdinand V., King 
of Hungary, and Crown Prince of the other heredi- 
tary states, has been most graciously pleased, 
prompted by a piety worthy the exalted title of an 
apostolic king, to accept the office of Protector of 
the Leopold Foundation.” Now in the present 
state of the war of principles in Europe, is not a so- 
ciety formed avowedly to act upon this country, ori- 
ginating in the dominions of a despot, and holding 
its secret councils in his capital, calculated to excite 
suspicion 1 Is it credible that a society got up under 
the auspices of the Austrian government, under the 
superintendence of its chief officers of state, supply- 
ing with funds a numerous body of Jesuit emissaries 
who are organizing themselves in all our borders, 


UNDER THE CLOAK OF RELIGION. 


23 


actively passing and re-passing between Europe 
and America ; is it credible, I say, that such a soci- 
ety has for its object purely a religious reform ? Is 
it credible that the manufacturers of chains for bind- 
ing liberty in Europe, have suddenly become bene- 
volently concerned only for the religious welfare of 
this republican people ? If this Society be solely 
for the propagation of the Catholic faith, one would 
think that Rome , and not Vienna should be its head- 
quarters ! that the Pope , not the Emperor of Aus - 
tria , should be its grand patron ! It must be allow- 
ed that this should be a subject of general and ab- 
sorbing interest. If despotism has devised a scheme 
for operating against its antagonist principle in this 
country, the strong hold, the very citadel of free- 
dom, it becomes us to look about us. It is high 
time that we awake to the apprehension of danger. 
I propose to show, why I believe this ostensibly re- 
ligious society covers other designs than religious. 


















CHAPTER II. 


Political character of the Austrian government, the power 
attacking us — The old avowed enemy of Protestant li- 
berty— Character of the people of Austria— Slaves — Cha- 
racter of Prince Metternich, the arch contriver of plans to 
stifle liberty— These enemies of all liberty, suddenly anxi- 
ous for the civil and religious liberty of the United States — 
The absurdity of their ostensible design exposed — The 
avowed objects of Austria in the Leopold foundation — Po- 
pery the instrument to act upon our institutions. 

The documents to which I have alluded, exhibit 
so much of the correspondence of the “ St. Leopold 
Foundation,” as it was deemed advisable to publish 
in Vienna. They consist of letters and statements 
from Jesuists, bishops and priests, residing or itine- 
rating in this country, and whose resources are 
derived chiefly from the Society in Austria. In 
documents thus prepared by Jesuists, (the most wary 
order of ecclesiastics,) to draw forth more liberal 
supplies of money from abroad, and then submitted 
to the revision of the most cautious cabinet of Europe, 
that so much only may be published as will attain, 
their object in the Austrian dominions, while all that 
might excite suspicion in the United States is con- 
cealed, we must expect to find great care to avoid 
3 


26 


CHARACTER OP ACSTOXA, 


any unnecessary exposure of covert political desgns. 
The evidence therefore of a concerted political 
attack upon our institutions, which I conceive to lurk 
under the sudden and extraordinary zeal of Austria 
for the religious welfare of the United States, will 
not depend altogether on the information derived from 
these documents. Such an attack is what might be 
expected from the present political attitude of the 
European nations, in regard to the principles of des- 
potism and liberty ; from the powerful and unavoid- 
able effect which our institutions exert in favor of 
the popular principle ; and also from the known poli- 
tical character of Austria. 

Who, and what is Austria, the government that is 
so benevolently concerned for our religious welfare 1 
Austria is one of that Holy Alliance of despotic gov- 
ernments, one of the “ union of Christian princes,” 
leagued against the liberties of the people of Europe, 
Austria is one of the partitioned of Poland ; the en- 
slaver and despot of Italy. Her government is the 
most thorough military despotism in the world. She 
is the declared and consistent enemy of civil and re- 
ligious liberty ; of the freedom of the press ; iu short, 
of every great principle in those free institutions 
which it is our glory and privilege to inherit from our 
fathers. Austria, from the commencement of the 
Reformation to the present time, has been the bitter 


THE PEOPLE, AND PHINCE METTERNICH. 


27 


enemy of Protestantism. The famous thirty years’ 
war, marked by every kind of brutal excess, was 
waged to extirpate those very principles of civil and 
religious liberty which lie at the foundation of our 
government, and had Austria then triumphed, this 
republic would never have been founded. 

And what are the people of Austria ? They are 
slaves, slaves in body and mind, whipped and dis- 
ciplined by priests to have no opinion of their own, 
and taught to consider their Emperor their God. 
They are the jest and by- word of the Northern Ger- 
mans, who never speak of Austrians but with a sneer, 
and, “ as slaves unworthy the name of Germans ; 
as slaves both mentally and physically.” [Dwight.] 

And who is Prince Metternich, whose letter of 
approval, in the name of his master the Emperor, is 
among the documents ? He is the master of his Mas- 
ter, the arch contriver of the plans for stifling liberty 
in Europe and throughout the world. “ Metternich,” 
says Dwight in his Travels in Germany, “ by his 
wonderful talent in exciting fear, has thus far control- 
led the cabinets of Europe, and has exerted an influ- 
ence over the destinies of nations, little, if any infe- 
rior to that of Napoleon.” He persuaded the Empe- 
ror of Austria and King of Prussia not to fulfil the 
promise they so solemnly made to their German 
subjects of giving them free constitutions. It was 


ACTS OP METTERNICH AGAINST LIBERTY. 


28 

the influence of Metternich that prevented Alexander 
from assisting Greece in her struggles for liberty. 
He lent Austrian vessels to assist the Turks in the 
subjugation of the Greeks. Metternich crushed the 
liberties of Spain by inducing Louis XVIII., against 
his wishes, to send 100,000 men thither under the 
Duke d’ Angouleme to restore 'public order ! “ When 
Sicily, Naples, and Genoa, in 1820-1, threw off the 
galling yoke of slavery, Metternich sent his 30,000 
Austrian bayonets into Italy and re-established des- 
potism. And when in 1831, (as the writer can tes- 
tify from personal observation,) goaded to desperation 
by the extortion and tyranny, and bad faith of the 
Papal government, the Italian patriots made a noble 
and successful effort to remedy their political evils 
by a revolution firm, yet temperate, founded in the 
most tolerant principles, marked by no excess, and 
hailed by the Legations with universal joy, again did 
this arch-enemy of human happiness let loose his 
myrmidons, overwhelming the cities, dragging the 
patriots, Italy’s first citizens to the scaffold, or incar- 
cerating them in the dungeons of Venice, filling whole 
provinces with mourning, and bringing back upon the 
wretchedly oppressed population the midnight dark- 
ness which the dawn of liberty had begun to dispel. 
“ Prince Metternich,” says Dwight, “is regarded by 
the liberals of Europe as the greatest enemy of the 


AUSTRIA CONCERNED FOR OUR WELFARE. 29 

human race who has lived for ages. You rarely 
hear his name mentioned without exciting indigna- 
tion, not only in the speaker but in the auditors. Met- 
ternich has not been attacking men but principles, 
and has done so much towards destroying on the con- 
tinent those great political truths, which nations have 
acquired through ages of effort and suffering, that 
there is reason to fear, should his system continue for 
half a century, liberty will forsake the continent to 
revisit it no more. The Saxons litertilly abhor this 
Prince. The German word mitternacht means mid- 
night. From the resemblance of the word to Met- 
ternich, as well as from his efforts to cover Europe 
with political darkness, the Saxons call him Prince 
Mitternacht — Prince Midnight. ” 

This is the government and the people, which 
have, all at once, manifested so deep an interest in 
the spiritual condition of this heretic land. It is this 
nation of slaves, this remnant of the superstition and 
vassalage, and degradation of the dark ages, from 
whom the light of the nineteenth century has been 
so carefully shut out, that it fondly conceits its own 
darkness to be light , its death-like torpor , order , — it is 
this nation, not yet disenthralled from the chains of su- 
perstition, that is anxious to enlighten us, in the United 
States, in the principles of civil and religious liberty. 
Civil and religious liberty ! words that may not be 
3 * 


30 


A SUSPICIOUS BENEVOLENCE. 


uttered in Austria but at the risk of the dungeon ; words 
that would carry such shrieks of dismay through 
the ranks of Prince Metternich’s vassals, as the flash 
of a torch would bring forth from a cavern of owls. 

And can it be believed that such a government, the 
determined, consistent enemy of liberty, has no inte- 
rested motive, no political design, no other than sen- 
timents of Christian benevolence in her operations in 
this country 1 Is it likely that we, Protestant repub- 
licans of the United States, have won the kind re- 
gards of the Austrian government, which has been 
the persevering foe of the Reformation and its repub- 
lican fruits since the days of Luther ? lias not Aus- 
tria had vexation and anxiety and trouble enough for 
fifty years past, in stopping up the opening crevices 
of the European dungeon through which the unwel- 
come light of American liberty has so often broken, 
to be perfectly apprised of the hated source of that 
light 1 Yes, she cannot but now perceive, that those 
Protestant principles, which she has been incessantly 
engaged in endeavoring to suppress, driven by the 
winds of persecution from Europe, have been taking 
root, and strengthening in a congenial soil, and are 
here bearing their genuine fruits, liberty and happi- 
ness, and all the religious and social virtues. She 
cannot view this Protestant nation growing to gigan- 
tic dimensions, a living proof of the truth and salutary 


A GOVERNMENT NOT A PRIVATE ENTERPRISE. 


31 


influence of the principles she hates, without feeling 
that her own principles of darkness are in danger. 
And well may she be dismayed. Yes, Austria has 
turned her eyes towards us, and she loves us as the 
owl loves the sun. Can any one doubt that she would 
extinguish every spark of liberty in this country, if she 
had the power ? Can any one believe that she would 
make no attempt to abate an evil which daily threat- 
ens more and more the very existence of her throne? 
We may be told by some, perhaps, that her designs are 
purely of a religious character. Who can believe it ? 
No one who has been in Austria. Every intelligent 
man who has resided even for a short time in the Aus- 
trian dominions, must have seen enough of the craft, 
both of the government and the priests, to make him 
suspicious of all their doings, and most so, when they 
are most lavish of their professions of kindness and 
benevolence. “ Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.” 

But let us see what Austria avows as her design 
in the formation of the Leopold Foundation.* The 
first great object is “ To promote the greater activity 

* Some may be inclined to ask, Is not this society a 'private 
association, merely chartered by the government, not differing 
materially from the religious societies in our own- country ? I 
answer that, were the Leopold Foundation an association of 
private individuals, (which it is not.) yet got up in the .Austrian 
dominions, it would still be a government affair . — For we 
must not confound the practices of two governments, so to- 
tally opposite in the administration of all their affairs as the 
Austrian and our own. From the happy separation of church 
and Btatein our own country,religious 8ocieties,of whatever cha- 


32 


CATHOLIC MISSIONS THE INSTRUMENT. 


of Catholic missions in America.” She may be, and 
doubtless is, perfectly sincere in this design, for it is 
only necessary that she should succeed in her avow- 
ed object to have her utmost wishes accomplished. 
She need avow no other aim. If she gains this, she 
gains all. If she succeeds in fastening upon us the 
chains of Papal bondage, she has a people as fit for 
any yoke she pleases to grace our necks withal, as 
any slaves over whom she now holds her despotic 
rod. She has selected a fitting instrument for her 
purpose. Her armies can avail her nothing against 
us, for the ocean intervenes. Her diplomacy gives 
her no hold, for there are scarcely any political rela- 
tions between us. The only instrument by which 
she can gain the least influence in these States is that 
precisely which she has chosen. Its perfect fitness to 
accomplish any political design against the liberties 
of this country and of the world, I shall next consider. 

racter, have no connection with the government. They move 
in a separate sphere of action, yet in perfect harmony with it. 
But in Austria, no plan, no society of any kind, is private; 
the government interferes in every thing, is all in all. Even 
the persecuted Maroncelli, confined in the dungeons of Spiel- 
berg for the crime of loving the political principles of this coun- 
try, must wait a week, at the risk of this life, for a gracious 
permission from the Paternal government to have his leg am- 
putated. Yes, a private matter like this is a government 
affair ; how much more then a grand society, with the Empe- 
ror its patron, the Crown prince and heir to the imperial throne 
its protector, and Prince Metternich, and all the dignitaries of 
the empire, temporal and ecclesiastical, engaged in its opera- 
tions ? It is the Austrian government that is engaged in this 
plan of an ostensibly religious character. 





CHAPTER III. 


Popery, in its political not its religious character, the object of 
the present examination — The fitness of the instrument to 
accomplish the political designs of despotism considered — 
The principles of a despotic and free government, briefly 
contrasted — Despotic principles fundamental in Popery — 
Proved by infallible testimony— Papal claims of divine 
right and ptentitude of poucer— Abject principles of Popery 
illustrated from the ' Russian catechism— Protestantism 
from its birth in favor of liberty— Luther on the 4th of 
July attacked the presumptuous claim of divine right — Des- 
potism and Popery hand in hand against the liberty of 
conscience, liberty of opinion, and liberty of the press— 
The anti-republican declarations of the present Pope Gre- 
gory, XVI. 

Before commencing the examination of the per- 
fect fitness of the instrument, Catholic missions , to 
accomplish the political designs upon this country of 
Austria and her despotic allies, I would premise, that 
I have nothing to do in these remarks with the 
'purely religious character of the tenets of the Roman 
Catholic sect. They are not in discussion. If any 
wish to resolve their doubts in the religious contro- 
versy, the acute pens of the polemic writers of the 
day will furnish them abundant means of deciding for 
themselves. But every religious sect has certain 


34 DESPOTIC AND FREE PRINCIPLES CONTRASTED. 

principles of government growing out of its particu- 
lar religious belief, and which will be found to agree 
or disagree with the principles of any given form of 
-civil government.* It is my design, therefore, brief- 
ly to consider some of the antagonist principles of 
the government of Austria and of the United States, 
and compare them with the principles of govern- 
ment of the Catholic and Protestant sects. By this 
method we shall be able to judge of their bearing 
on the permanency of our present civil institutions. 

Let us hrst present to view the fundamental 'prin- 
ciple of government , that principle which, according 
to its agreement with one or the other of the two 
opposite opinions that divide the world, decides en- 
tirely the character of the government in every part 
of the body politic. From whom is authority to go- 
vern derived ? Austria and the United States will 
agree in answering,— from God. The opposition of 
opinion occurs in the answers to the next question. 
To whom on earth is this authority delegated ? Austria 
answers, To the Emperor, who is the source of all 
authority , — u Ithe Emperor do ordain ,” &,c. The Uni- 
ted States answers, To the People, in whom resides 
the Sovereign power , — “ We the People do ordain, es- 
tablish, grant,” &c. In one principle is recognized the 
necessity of the servitude of the people, the absolute 
* See note B. 


DESPOTISM INHERENT IN POPERY. $5 

dependence of the subject, unqualified submission to 
the commands of the rulers without question or ex- 
amination. The Ruler is Master , the People are 
Slaves. In the other is recognized the supremacy of 
the people , the equality of rights and powers of the 
citizen, submission alone to laws emanating from 
themselves ; the Ruler is a public servant, receiving 
wages from the people to perform services agreeable 
to their pleasure ; amenable in all things to them ; 
and holding office at their will. The Ruler is Ser- 
vant, the People are Master . The fact and impor- 
tant nature of the difference in these antagonist doc- 
trines, leading, as is perceived, to diametrically oppo- 
site results, are all that is needful to state in order to 
proceed at once to the inquiry, which position does 
the Catholic sect and the Protestant sects severally 
favor 1 The Pope, the supreme Head of the Catho- 
lic church, claims to be the “ Vicegerent of God,” 
“ supreme over all mortals ;” “ over all Emperors, 
Kings, Princes, Potentates and People “ King of 
kings and Lord of lords.” He styles himself, “ the 
divinely appointed dispenser of spiritual and tempo- 
ral punishments “ armed with power to depose Em- 
perors and Kings, and absolve subjects from their 
oath of allegiance “ from him lies no appeal “ he 
is responsible to no one on earth “ he is judged of 
no one but God.” But not to go back to former ages 


36 ABJECT POLITICAL PRINCIPLES OF POPERY. 

to prove the fact of the Pope’s claiming divine right, 
let the present Pontiff Gregory XVI. testify. He 
claims, and attempts the exercise of this plentitude of 
power and asserts his divine right. The document 
I quote is fresh from the Vatican, scarce four months 
old, a document in which the Pope interferes directly 
in the political affairs of Portugal against Don Pedro. 
“ How can there be unity in the body,” says the 
Pope, “ when the members are not united to the 
head and do not obey it ? And how can this union and 
obedience be maintained in a country where they 
drive from their sees the bishops, legitimately insti- 
tuted by Him to whom it appertains to assign pastors 
to all the vacant churches, because the divine right 
grants to Him alone the primacy of jurisdiction and 
the plentitude of power .” The Catholic catechism 
now taught by Catholic priests to the Poles in all the 
schools of Poland, and published by special order at 
Wilna, 1832, is very conclusive of the character of 
Catholic doctrine. The following questions and 
answers are propounded : 

“Quest. 1. How is the authority of the Emperor 
to be considered in reference to the spirit of Chris- 
tianity ? Ans. As proceeding immediately from 
God. 

“ Quest. 2. How is this substantiated by the nature 
of things? Ans. It is by the will of God that men 
live in society ; hence the various relations which 


RUSSIAN CATECHISM. 


37 


constitute society, which for its more complete secu- 
rity is divided into parts called nations ; the govern- 
ment of which is intrusted to a Prince, King, or Em- 
peror, or in other words, to a Supreme ruler ; we 
see, then, that as man exists in conformity to the 
will of God, society emanates from the same divine 
will, and more especially the supreme power and 
authority of our lord and master, the Czar. 

“ Quest. 3. What duties does religion teach us 
the humble subjects of his majesty the Emperor of 
Russia, to practice towards him? Ans. Worship, 
obedience, fidelity, the payment of taxes, service, 
love and prayer, the whole being comprised in the 
words worship and fidelity. 

“ Quest. 4. Wherein does this worship consist, 
and how should it be manifested ? Ans. By the most 
unqualified reverence in words, gestures, demeanor, 
thoughts and actions. 

“ Quest. 5. What kind of obedience do we owe 
him ? Ans. An entire, passive, and unbounded obe- 
dience in every point of view. 

“ Quest. 6. In what consists the fidelity we 
owe to the Emperor ? Ans. In executing his com- 
mands most rigorously, without examination, in per- 
forming the duties he requires from us, and in doing 
every thing willingly without murmuring. 

“ Quest. 8. Is the service of his Majesty, the Em- 
peror, obligatory on us ? Ans. Absolutely so ; we 
should, if required, sacrifice ourselves in compli- 
ance with his will, both in a civil and military capa- 
city, and in whatever manner he deems expedient. 

“Quest. 9. What benevolent sentiments and love 
are due to the Emperor? Ans. We should mani- 
fest our good will and affection, according to our 
station, in endeavoring to promote the prosperity of 
our native land, Russia, (not Poland,) as well as that 
4 


38 


RUSSIAN CATECHISM. 


of the Emperor, our father, and of his august fa- 
mily. * * * 

“ Quest. 13. Does religion forbid us to rebel, and 
overthrow the government of the Emperor ? Ans. 
We are interdicted from so doing, at all times, and 
under any circumstances. 

“ Quest. 14. Independently of the worship we owe 
to the Emperor, are we called upon to respect the 
public authorities emanating from him 1 Ans. Yes ; 
because they emanate from him, represent him, and 
act as his substitute, so that the Emperor is every 
where. 

“Quest. 15. What motives have we to fulfil the 
duties above enumerated ? Ans. The motives are 
two-fold — some natural, others revealed. 

“ Quest. 16. What are the natural motives ? Ans* 
Besides the motives adduced, there are the following : 
The Emperor, being the head of the nation, the fa- 
ther of all his subjects who constitute one and the 
same country, is thereby alone worthy of reverence, 
gratitude, and obedience: for both public welfare 
and individual security depend on submissiveness 
to his commands. 

“ Quest. 17. What are the supernatural revealed 
motives for this worship ? Ans. The supernatural 
revealed motives are, that the Emperor is the vice- 
gerent and minister of God to execute the divine 
commands ; and, consequently, disobedience to the 
Emperor is identified with disobedience to God him- 
self j that God will reward us in the world to come 
for the worship and obedience we render the Empe- 
ror, and punish us severely to all eternity should we 
disobey and neglect to worship him. Moreover, 
God commands us to love and obey from the inmost 
recesses of the heart every authority, and particu- 


LIBERTS INHERENT IN PROTESTANTISM. 


39 


larly the Emperor, not from worldly considerations, 
hut from apprehension of the final judgment. * * 

“ Quest. 19. What examples confirm this doc- 
trine? Ans. The example of Jesus Christ himself, who 
lived and died in allegiance to the Emperor of Rome, 
and respectfully submitted to the judgment which 
condemned him to death. We have, moreover, the 
example of the Apostles, who both loved and re- 
spected them ; they suffered meekly in dungeons 
conformably to the will of Emperors, and did not 
revolt like malefactors and traitors. We must, 
therefore, in imitation of these examples, suffer and 
be silent.” 

This is the slavish doctrine taught to the Catholics 
of Poland. The people, instead of having power or 
rights, are according to this catechism mere passive 
slaves, born for their masters, taught by a perversion 
of the threatenings of religion to obey without mur- 
muring, or questioning, or examination, the mandates 
of their human deity, bid to cringe and fawn and kiss 
the very feet of majesty, and deem themselves happy 
to be whipped, to be kicked, or to die in his service. 
Is it necessary to say that there is not a Protestant 
sect in this country that holds such abject sentiments, 
or whose creed inculcates such barefaced idolatry of 
a human being ? Protestantism, on the contrary, at 
its birth, while yet bound with many of the shackles 
of Popery, attacked, in its earliest lispings of free- 


40 COINCIDENCE OF POPISH AND DESPOTIC LAWS. 

dom, this very doctrine of divine nglit . It was 
Luther, and by a singular coincidence of day too, on 
the fourth of July , who first in a public disputation 
at Leipsic with his Popish antagonist, called in ques- 
tion the divine right of the Pope. 

Let us now examine in contrast other political 
rights, liberty of conscience , liberty of opinion , and 
liberty of the press. Austria and the United States 
differ on these points as widely as on the fundamental 
question. Austria not only has the press in her own 
territory under censorship, but intermeddles to con- 
trol the press in neighboring states on the principle 
of self preservation. “ In Saxony,” says Dwight, 
u the press is fettered by Austria and Prussia, who 
allege this reason, ‘ that all the works published in 
Saxony, which are not on the proscribed list , are 
freely admitted into our dominions. For our happi. 
ness , therefore, and the stability of our thrones , it is 
necessary that the press should be fettered ! /’ ” As 
to liberty of opinion, political or religious, in Austria, 
no one dreams of the existence of such a thing ; the 
dungeon is a summary mode there of obtaining a 
most happy uniformity of opinion throughout all the 
imperial dominions. It is our glory, on the contrary, 
that all these rights are secured to us by our institu- 
tions, and freely enjoyed, not only without the least 


POPERY AGAINST LIBERTY OF OPINION. 


41 


danger to the peace of the state, but from the very 
genius of our government, they are esteemed among 
its most precious safeguards. What are the Catho- 
lic tenets on these points ? Shall I go back some 
three or four hundred years, and quote the pontifical 
law which says, [Art. 9.] “ The Pope has the power 
to interpret Scripture and to teach as he pleases, 
and no person is allowed to teach in a different way.” 
Or to the fourth Council of Lateran in 1215, which 
decrees “ That all heretics, (that is all who have an 
opinion of their own,) shall be delivered over to the 
civil magistrate to he burned.” Or shall I refer to 
the Catholic Index Expurgatorius to the list of for- 
bidden books, to show how the press is still fettered ? 
No ! it is unnecessary to go farther than the present 
day. The reigning pontiff Gregory XVI. shall 
again answer the question. He has most opportunely 
furnished us with the present sentiments of the Ca- 
tholic church on these very points. In his ency- 
clical letter, dated Sept. 1832, the Pope, lamenting 
the disorders and infidelity of the times, says, 

“From this polluted fountain of ‘ indifference,’ 
flows that absurd and erroneous doctrine, or rather 
raving, in favor and defence of ‘liberty of con- 
science,’ for which most pestilential error, the 
course is opened to that entire and wild liberty of 
4* 


42 POPEEY AGAINST LIBERTY OF THE PRESS. 

opinion, which is every where attempting the over, 
throw of religious and civil institutions ; and which 
the unblushing impudence of some has held forth 
as an advantage to religion. Hence that pest, of all 
others most to he dreaded in a state, unbridled liberty 
of opinion, licentiousness of speech, and a lust of no- 
velty, which, according to the experience of all ages, 
portend the downfall of the most powerful and flour- 
ishing empires.” 

“ Hither tends that worst and never sufficiently to 
be execrated and detested liberty of the press, for 
the diffusion of all manner of writings, which some 
so loudly contend for, and so actively promote.” 

He complains too of the dissemination of unli- 
censed books. 

“ No means must be here omitted, says Clement 
X III., our predecessor of happy memory, in the 
Encyclical Letter on the proscription of bad books 
— no means must be here omitted, as the extremity 
of the case calls for all our exertions, to exterminate 
the fatal pest which spreads through so many works ; 
nor can the materials of error be otherwise destroy- 
ed than by the flames, which consume the depraved 
elements of the evil.” 

Now all this is explicit enough, here is no am- 
biguity. We see clearly from infallible authority 


POPERY INTOLERANT OP ALL LIBERTY. 


43 


that the Catholic of the present day, wherever he 
may be, if he is true to the principles of his sect, can- 
not consistently tolerate liberty of conscience, or li- 
berty of the press. Is there any sect of Protestants 
in this country, from whose religious tenets doctrines 
so subversive of civil and religious liberty can be 
even inferred ? If there be, I am ignorant of its 
name. The subject will be pursued in the next 
chapter. 



























CHAPTER IV. 


The cause of Popery and despotism identical— Striking differ- 
ence between Popery and Protestantism as they exist in this 
country — American Protestantism not controlled by foreign 
Protestantism — American Popery entirely under foreign con- 
trol — Jesuits the foreign agents of Austria, bound by the 
strongest ties of interest to Austrian policy, not to American 
— Their dangerous power — unparalleled in any Protestant 
sect — Our free institutions opposed in their nature to the 
arbitrary claims of Popery — Duplicity to be expected — Po- 
litical dangers to be apprehended from Roman Catholic or- 
ganization— American Roman Catholic ecclesiastical mat- 
ters uncontrolled by Americans or in America — Managed 
in a foreign country by a foreign power for political purpo- 
ses— Consequences that may easily result from such a state 
of things. 

I exposed in my last chapter the remarkable 
coincidence of the tenets of Popery with the principles 
of despotic government, in this respect so opposite 
to the tenets of Protestantism ; Popery, from its very 
nature, favoring despotism, and Protestantism, from 
its very nature, favoring liberty. Is it not then per- 
fectly natural that the Austrian government should 
be active in supporting Catholic missions in this 
country ? Is it not clear that the cause of Popery 
is the cause of despotism ? 


46 PROTESTANT SECTS MANAGED IN THE COUNTRY. 


But there is another most striking and important 
difference between Popery and Protestantism, in 
their bearing upon the liberties of the country. No 
one of the Protestant sects owns any head out of this 
country , or is governed in any of its concerns by any 
men or set of men in a foreign land. All ecclesi- 
astical officers are nominated and appointed or re- 
moved by the people of the United States. No for- 
eign body has any such union with any sect of Pro- 
testants in the United States, as even to advise, much 
less to control any of its measures. Our Episco- 
palians appoint their own bishops without consulting 
the church of England ; our Presbyterians are en- 
tirely independent of the church of Scotland ; and our 
Wesleyan Methodists have no ecclesiastical connec- 
tion with the disciples of Wesley in the old world. 
But how is it in these respects with the Catholics ? 
The right of appointing to all ecclesiastical offices 
in this country, as every where else, is in the Pope, 
(now a mere creature of Austria.) He claims the 
power, as we have seen, by divine right. All the 
bishops, and all the ecclesiastics down to the most 
insignificant officer in the church, are from the ge- 
nius of the system entirely under his control. And 
he, of course, will appoint none to office but those 
who will favor the views of Austria. He will re- 


POPERY MANAGED OUT OP THE COUNTRY. 47 

quire all whom he appoints, to support the agents 
whom Austria is sending to this country for the ac- 
complishment of her own purposes. 

And who are these agents ? They are , for the 
most part Jesuits , an ecclesiastical order, proverbial 
through the world for cunning, duplicity, and total 
want of moral principle ; an order so skilled in all 
the arts of deception that even in Catholic coun- 
tries, in Italy itself, it became intolerable, and the 
people required its suppression. They are Jesuits 
in the pay and employ of a despotic government , who 
are at work on the ignorance and passions of our 
community ; they are foreigners, who have been 
schooled in foreign seminaries in the doctrine of 
passive obedience ; they are foreigners under vows 
o £ perpetual celibacy, and having, therefore, no deep 
and permanent interest in this country ; they are 
foreigners, bound by the strong ties of pecuniary 
interest and ambition, to the service of a foreign des- 
pot.* Is there no danger to our free institutions 
from a host commanded by such men, whose num- 
bers are constantly increasing by the machinations 
and funds of Austria ? 

Consider, too, the power which these Jesuits 
and other Catholic priests possess through the con- 
fessional, of knowing the private characters and af- 
*See Note C. 


48 


DANGEROUS TOWER OF JESUITS. 


fairs of all the leading men in the community ; the 
power arising from their right to prescribe the kinds 
and degrees of penance; and the power arising 
from the right to refuse absolution to those who do 
not comply with their commands. Suppose such 
powers were exercised by the ministers of any other 
sect, the Episcopalian, the Methodist, the Presbyte- 
rian, the Baptist, &c. what an outcry would be 
raised in the land ! And should not the men who 
possess such powers be jealously watched by all 
lovers of liberty 1 

Is it possible that these Jesuits can have a sin- 
cere attachment to the principles of free institutions ? 
Do not these principles oppose a constant barrier to 
their exercise of that arbitrary power, which they 
claim as a divine right, and which they exercise too 
in all countries where they are dominant ? Can it 
not be perceived, that although they may find it po- 
litic for the present to conceal their anti-republican 
tenets, yet this concealment will be merely tempo- 
rary, and is only adopted now, the better to lull sus- 
picion ? Is it not in accordance with all experience 
of Popish policy, that Jesuits should encroach by lit- 
tle and little, and persevere till they have attained to 
plenitude of power. At present they have but one 
aim in this country, which absorbs all others, and 
that is to make themselves popular. If they sue- 


UNDER AUSTRIAN CONTROL. 


49 


ceed in this we shall then learn, when too late to 
remedy the evil, that Popery abandons none of its 
divine rights . The leaders of this sect are disci- 
plined and organized, and have their adherents en- 
tirely subservient to their will. Here then is a re- 
gular party, a religious sect , ready to throw the 
weight of its power, as circumstances may require, 
ready to favor any man, or set of men, who will en- 
gage to favor it. 

And to whom do these leaders look for their in- 
structions 1 Is it to a citizen or body of citizens be- 
longing to this country ; is it to a body of men kept 
in check by the ever jealous eyes of other bodies 
around them, and by the immediate publicity which 
must be given to all their doings ? No, they are men 
owning no law on this side of the ocean ; they are 
the Pope and his Consistory of Cardinals, following 
the plans and instructions of the imperial cabinet of 
Austria, — plans formed in the secret councils of that 
cabinet, instructions delivered in secret, according 
to the modes of despotism, to their obedient officers, 
and distributed through the well disciplined ranks in 
this country, to be carried into effect in furtherance 
of any political designs the Austrian cabinet may 
think advantageous to its own interests . And will 
these designs be in favor of liberty T With a party 
thus formed and disciplined among us, who will ven- 
5 


50 


RESULT OF THIS CONTROL. 


ture to say that our elections will not be under the 
control of a Metternich, and that the appointment of 
a President of the United States will not be virtually 
made in the Imperial Cabinet of Vienna, or the Con- 
sistory of Cardinals at Rome? Will this be pro- 
nounced incredible? It will be the almost certain 
result of the dominion of Popery in this coun- 
try. 

But we need not imagine that it will always be 
deemed expedient to preserve the name of Presi- 
dent, or even the elective character of our chief 
magistrate. How long would it take the sophistry 
that deludes the mind of its victim into the belief of 
a man’s infallibility, and fixes the delusion there in- 
delibly, binding him soul and body to believe against 
the evidence of his reason, and his senses j holding 
him in the most abject obedience to the will of a 
fellow-man ; how long, I say, would it take such 
sophistry to impose the duty of acknowledging the 
divine right of an emperor over the priest conquer- 
ed vassals of this country — vassals well instructed 
in the Russian Catechism, and prepared to worship, 
loye and obey as their Lord and Master, some scion 
of the House of Hapsburg, — the Emperor of the 
United States ? 


CHAPTER V. 


Points in our political system which favor this foreign at- 
tack— Our toleration of all religious systems — Popery opposed 
to all toleration— Charge of intolerance substantiated— The 
organization of Popery in America connected with and 
strengthened by foreign organization — Without a parallel 
among Protestant sects— Great preponderance of Popish 
strength in consequence — The divisions among Protestant 
sects nullifies their attempts at combination — Taken advan- 
tage of by Jesuits — Popish duplicity illustrated in its oppo- 
site alliances in Europe with despotism, and in America 
with democracy — The laws relating to immigration and 
naturalization favor foreign attack — Emigrants being 
mostly Catholic and in entire subjection to their priests — 
No remedy provided by our laws for this alarming evil. 

What I have advanced in my previous chap- 
ters may have convinced my readers that there is 
good reason for believing that the despots of Europe 
are attempting, by the spread of Popery in this 
country, to subvert its free institutions ; yet many 
may think that there are so many counteracting 
causes in the constitution of our society, that this ef- 
fort to bind us with the cast-off chains of the bigotry 
and superstition of Europe cannot meet with success. 
I will, therefore, in the present chapter, consider 
some of the points in our political system, of which 
advantage has already been taken to attack us, by 
the wily enemies of our liberties. 


52 


OUR TOLERATION FAVORS ATTACK. 


It is a beautiful feature in our constitution, that 
every man is left to worship God according to the 
dictates of his own conscience, that the church is 
separated from the state, and that equal protection 
is granted to all creeds. In thus tolerating all sects, 
we have admitted to equal protection not only those 
sects whose religious faith and practice support the 
principle on which the free toleration of all is found- 
ed, but also that unique, that solitary sect, the Cath- 
olic, which builds and supports its system on the 
destruction of all toleration. Yes, the Catholic is 
permitted to work in the light of Protestant tolera- 
tion, to mature his plans, and to execute his designs 
to extinguish that light, and destroy the hands that 
hold it. It is no refutation of the charge of intole- 
rance here made against Catholics as a sect, to show 
that small bodies of them, under peculiar circum- 
stances, have been tolerant, or that in this country, 
where they have always been a small minority, they 
make high professions of ardent love for the repub- 
lican, tolerant institutions of our government. No 
one can be deceived by evidence so partial and cir- 
cumscribed, while the blood of the persecuted for 
opinion’s sake, stains with the deepest tinge every 
page of the history of that church, aye, even while 
it is still wet upon the dungeon floors of Italy ; while 
the intolerant and anti-republican principles of Pope- 


POPBRY ESSENTIALLY INTOLERANT. 


53 


ry are now weekly thundered from the Vatican, and 
echoed in our ears by almost every arrival from 
Europe.* 

Let me not be charged with accusing the Catho- 
lics of the United States with intolerance. They are 
too small a body as yet fully to act out their princi- 
ples, and their present conduct does not affect the 
general question in any way, unless it may be to 
prove that they are not genuine and consistent Catho- 
lies. The conduct of a small insulated body, under 
the restraints of the society around it, is of no 
weight in deciding the character of the sect, while 
there are nations of the same infallible faith acting 
out its legitimate principles uncontrolled, and pro- 
ducing fruits by which all may discern, without dan- 
ger of mistake, the true nature of the tree. If Po- 
pery is tolerant, let us see Italy, and Austria, and 
Spain, and Portugal, open their doors to the teachers 
of the Protestant faith ; let these countries grant to 
Protestant missionaries, as freely as we grant to 
Catholics, leave to disseminate their doctrine through 
all classes in their dominions. Then may Popery 
speak of toleration, then may we believe that it has felt 
the influence of the spirit of the age and has reform- 
ed ; but then it will not be Popery, for Popery never 
changes ; it is infallibly the same, infallibly intolerant . 

* See note D. 

5 * 


54 


DESPOTIC ORGANIZATION. 


The conspirators against our liberties who have 
been admitted from abroad through the liberality of 
our institutions, are now organized in every part of 
the country ; they are all subordinates, standing in 
regular steps of slave and master, from the most ab- 
ject dolt that obeys the commands of his priest, up 
to the great master-slave Metternich, who commands 
and obeys his Illustrious Master the Emperor.* 
They report from one to another, like the sub-offi- 
cers of an army, up to the commander-in-chief at 
Vienna, (not the Pope, for he is but a subordinate 
of Austria, f) There is a similar organization 
among the Catholics of other countries, and the 
whole Catholic church is thus prepared to throw its 

* See note E. 

i-Lest the charge often made in these numbers should seem 
gratuitous, of the Pope being the creature of Austria, and en- 
tirely subservient to the Imperial Cabinet, it may be as well 
to state that the writer was in Rome during the deliberations 
of the Conclave, respecting the election of the present Pontiff. 
It was interesting to him to hear the speculations of the Ital- 
ians on the probability of this or that cardinal’s election. 
Couriers were daily arriving from the various despotic powers, 
and intrigues were rife in the anti-chambers of the Quirinal 
palace; now it was said that Spain would carry her candi- 
date, now Italy, and now Austria, and when Cardinal Capel- 
lam was proclaimed Pope, the universal cry, mixed too with 
low-muttered curses, was that Austria had succeeded. The 
new Pope had scarcely chosen his title of Gregory XVI. and 
passed through the ceremonies of coronation, before the revo- 
lution in his states, gave him the opportunity of calling in Aus- 
tria to take possession of the Patrimony of St. Peter, which 
his own troops could not keep for an hour, and at this moment 
Austrian soldiers hold the Roman Legations in submission 
to the cabinet of Vienna. Is not the Pope a creature of Austria 1 


NO CHECIC FROM PROTESTANT ORGANIZATION. 55 

weight of power and wealth into the hands of Aus- 
tria, or any Holy Alliance of despots who may be 
persuaded to embark for the safety of their dynas- 
ties, in the crusade against the liberties of the country 
which, by its simple existence in opposition to their 
theory of legitimate power, is working revolution 
and destruction to their thrones. 

Now, to this dangerous conspiracy what have 
we to oppose in the discipline of Protestant sects ? 
However well organized, each according to its own 
manner, these different sects may be, there is not 
one of them that can by any possibility derive 
strength through its organization, from foreign sects 
of the same name. Nor is this a matter of regret ; 
it is right that it should be so ; no nation can be 
truly independent where it is otherwise. Foreign 
influence, then, cannot find its way into the country 
through any of the Protestant sects, to the danger of 
the State. In this respect Catholics stand alone. 
They are already the most powerful and dangerous 
sect in the country , for they are not confined in their 
schemes and means like the other sects, to our own 
borders, but they work ivitli the minds and the funds 
of all despotic Europe , 

And not only are each of the Protestant sects 
deprived of foreign aid ; they are weak collectively, 


58 UNNATURAL ALLIANCE OF POPERY AND DEMOCRACY. 

in having no common bond of union among them- 
selves, so far as political action is concerned. The 
mutual jealousies of the different sects have hitherto 
prevented this, and it is a weakness boasted of by 
Catholics, and of which advantage is and ever will 
be taken while the unnatural estrangement lasts. 
Catholics have boasted that they can play off one 
sect against another, for in the petty controversies 
that divide the contending parties, the pliable con- 
science of the Jesuit enables him to throw the weight 
of his influence on either side as his interest may be ; 
the command of his superiors, and the alleged good 
of the church , (that is the power of the priesthood,) 
being paramount to all other considerations. 

This pliability of conscience, so advantageous in 
building up any system of oppression, religious or 
political, presents us with strangely contradictory 
alliances. In Europe Popery supports the most 
high-handed despotism , lends its thunders to awe the 
people into the most abject obedience, and maintains 
at the top of its creed, the indissoluble union of 
church and state ! while in this country, where it is 
yet feeling its way, (oh ! hpw consistent !) it has 
allied itself with the democracy of the land, it is loud- 
est in its denunciations of tyranny, the tyranny of 
American patriots ! it is first to scent out oppres- 
sion, sees afar off the machinations of the native 


IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION LAWS. 57 

American Protestants to unite church and state ! and 
puts itself forth the most zealous guardian of civil 
and religious liberty ! With such sentinels, surely 
our liberties are safe, with such guardians of our 
rights, we may sleep on in peace ! 

Another weak point in our system is our laws 
encouraging immigration , and affording facilities to 
naturalization .* In the early state of the country 
liberality in these points was thought to be of ad- 
vantage, as it promoted the cultivation of our wild 
lands, but the dangers which now threaten our free 
institutions from this source more than balance all 
advantages of this character. The great body of 
emigrants to this country are the hard-working men- 
tally neglected poor of Catholic countries in Europe, 
who have left a land where they were enslaved, for 
one of freedom. However well disposed they may 
be to the country which protects them, and adopts 
them as citizens, they are not fitted to act with 
judgment in the political affairs of their new coun- 
try, like native citizens educated from their infancy 
in the principles and habits of our institutions. Most 
of them are too ignorant to act at all for themselves, 
and expect to be guided wholly by others. These 
others are of course their priests. Priests have 
ruled them at home by divine right ; their igno- 
See note F. 


58 DANGER FROM IGNORANT BMIQRANTS. 

rant minds cannot ordinarily be emancipated from 
their habitual subjection, they will not learn nor ap- 
preciate their exemption from any such usurpation 
of priestly power in this country, and they are im- 
plicitly at the beck of their spiritual guides. They 
live surrounded by freedom, yet liberty of con- 
science, right of private judgment, whether in reli- 
gion or politics, are as effectually excluded by the 
priests, as if the code of Austria already ruled the 
land. They form a body of men whose habits of 
action , (for I cannot say thought ,) are opposed to 
the principles of our free institutions, for they are 
not accessible to the reasonings of the press, they 
cannot and do not think for themselves. 

Every unlettered Catholic emigrant, therefore, 
that comes into the country, is adding to a mass of 
ignorance which it will be difficult to reach by any 
liberal instruction, and however honest, (and I have 
no doubt most of them are so,) yet from the nature 
of things they are but obedient instruments in the 
hands of their more knowing leaders to accomplish 
the designs of their foreign masters. Republican 
education, were it allowed freely to come in contact 
with their minds, would doubtless soon furnish a 
remedy for an evil for which, in the existing state of 
things, we have no cure. It is but to continue for a 
few years the sort of immigration that is now daily 


THEIR REQUITAL OF OUR HOSPITALITY. 59 

pouring in its thousands from Europe, and our insti- 
tutions, for aught that I can see, are at the mercy of 
a body of foreigners, officered by foreigners, and 
held completely under the control of a foreign 
power. We may then have reason to say, that we 
are the dupes of our own hospitality ; we have shel- 
tered in our well provided house a needy body of 
strangers, who, well filled with our cheer, are en- 
couraged by the unaccustomed familiarity with 
which they are treated, first to upset the regula- 
tions of the houshold, and then to turn their host and 
his family out of doors. 




' 






% 



CHAPTER VI. • 


The evil from immigration further considered— Its political 
bearings— The influence of emigrants at the elections— This 
influence concentrated in the priests — The priests must be 
propitiated — By what means— This influence easily pur- 
chased by the demagogue — The unprincipled character of 
many of our politicians favor this foreign attack — Their bar- 
gain for the suffrages of this priest-led band — A church and 
state party— The Protestant sects obnoxious to no such 
bargaining— The newspaper press favors this foreign attack 
— From its want of independence and its timidity — An anti- 
republican fondness for titles favors this foreign attack — 
Cautious attempts of Popery to dignify its emissaries and to 
accustom us to their high-sounding titles — A mistaken 
notion on the subject of discussing religious opinion in the 
secular journals favors this foreign attack — Political designs 
not to be shielded from attack because cloaked by religion. 

I will continue the consideration of some of the 
points in our political system, of which the foreign 
conspirators take advantage in their attacks on our 
liberties. We have seen that from the nature of the 
case the emigrant Catholics generally are shame- 
fully illiterate, and without opinions of their own. 
They are and must be under the direction of their 
priests. The press, with its arguments for or 
against any political measure, can have no effect on 

6 


62 


EMIGRANTS CONTROLLED BY PRIESTS. 


minds taught only to think as the priest thinks, and 
to do what the priest commands. Here is a large 
body of ignorant men brought into our community, 
who are unapproachable by any of the ordinary 
means of enlightening the people — a body of men 
who servilely obey a set of priests imported from 
abroad, bound to the country by none of the usual 
ties, owing allegiance and service to a foreign gov- 
ernment, depending on that government for promo- 
tion and reward, and this reward too depends on the 
manner in which they discharge the duties pre- 
scribed to them by their foreign master ; which is, 
doubtless for the present, to confine themselves sim- 
ply and wholly to increasing the number of their 
sect and the influence of the Pope in this country. 
It is men thus officered and of such a character, that 
we have placed in all respects on a level at our 
elections with the same number of native patriotic 
and intelligent citizens. 

The Jesuits are fully aware of the advantage 
they derive from this circumstance. They know 
that a body of men admitted to citizenship, un- 
learned in the true nature of American liberty, ex- 
ercising the elective franchise, totally uninfluenced 
by the ordinary methods of reasoning, but passively 
obedient only to the commands of their priests, must 
give those priests great consequence in the eyes of 


HOW PRIESTS ARE PROPITIATED. 


63 


the leaders of political parties ; they know that 
these leaders must esteem it very important that the 
priests be propitiated. And how is a Catholic 
priest to be propitiated? How, but by stipulating 
for that which will increase his power or the power 
of the church, for be it always borne in mind, that 
they are identical . The Roman church is the body 
of priests and prelates ; the laity have only to obey 
and to pay, not to exercise authority. The priest 
must be favored in his plans of destroying Protest- 
antism, and building up Popery. He must have 
money from the public treasury to endow Catholic 
institutions ; he must be allowed to have charters 
for these institutions which will confer extraordinary 
powers upon their Jesuit trustees ;* he must be per- 
mitted quietly to break down the Protestant Sabbath, 
by encouraging Catholics to buy and sell on that 
day as on other days ; in one word, he must have all 
the powers and privileges which the law or the offi- 
cers appointed to administer the law can conven- 
iently bestow upon him. The demagogue or the 
party who will promise to do most for the accom- 
plishment of these objects, will secure all the votes 
which he controls. Surely there is great danger 
to our present institutions from this source, and men 
as skilflH as are the Jesuits we may be sure will 
♦ See note G. 


64 UNPRINCIPLED CHARACTER OF POLITICIANS. 

not fail to use the power thus thrown into their 
hands to work great mischief to the republic. 

The recklessness and unprincipled character of 
too many of our politicians give a great advantage 
to these conspirators. There is a set of men in the 
country who will have power and office, cost what 
they may ; men who, without a particle of true pa- 
triotism, will yet ring the changes on the glory and 
honor of their country, talk loud of liberty, flatter 
the lowest prejudices, and fawn upon the powerful 
and the influential ; men who study politics only, that 
they may balance the chances of their own success 
in falling in with, or opposing, this or that fluctua- 
ting interest, without caring whether that interest 
tends to the security or the downfall of their coun- 
try’s institutions. To such politicians a body of men 
thus drilled by priests, presents a well fitted tool. 
The bargain with the priest will be easily struck. 
“ Give me office, and I will take care of the interests 
of your church.” The effect of the bargain upon 
the great moral or political interests of the country, 
will not for a moment influence the calculation. 
Thus we have among us a body of men, a religious 
sect, who can exercise a direct controlling influence 
in the politics of the country, and can be moved to- 
gether in a solid phalanx ; we have a church inter, 
firing directly and most powerfully in the affairs of 


OUR PRESS NOT INDEPENDENT. 


65 


state. There is not in the whole country a paral- 
lel to this among the other sects. What clergymen 
of the Methodists, or Baptists, or Episcopalians, or 
of any other denomination, could command the votes 
of the members oftheir several congregations in the 
election of an individual to political office ? The very 
idea of such power is preposterous to a Protestant. 
No freeman, no man accustomed to judge for himself, 
would submit even to be advised, unasked, by his 
minister in a matter of this kind, much less dictated to. 

Connected with these evils, and assisting to in- 
crease them, we have a Press , to an alarming ex- 
tent, wanting in independence. Most of our jour- 
nals are avowedly attached to a particular party, or 
to particular individuals, they are like council re- 
tained for a particular cause ; they are to say every 
thing that makes in favor of their client, and conceal 
every thing that makes against him. Does a ques- 
tion of principle arise, of fundamental importance to 
the country ? — the inquiry with a journal thus pledged 
is not, how are our free institutions, how is the coun- 
try affected by the decision, but how will the deci- 
sion affect the interests of our particular party or 
favorite ? How few are there among our newspaper 
editors who dare to take a manly stand for or against 
a principle that affects vitally the constitution, if it 
is found to bear unfavorably upon their party or 


66 


ANTI- REPUBLICAN FONDNESS FOR TITLES. 


their candidate 7 A press thus wanting in magna- 
nimity and independence is the fit instrument for ad- 
vancing the purposes of unprincipled men ; and edi- 
tors of this stamp, and they are confined to no par- 
ticular party, whether they have followed out their 
conduct or not to its legitimate results can easily be 
made the tools of a despot to subvert the liberties 
of their country. 

Again we have, still unsubdued, some weaknesses 
(perhaps they belong to human nature,) of which ad- 
vantage may be taken, to the injury of our republi- 
can character, and in aid of despotism, and which 
may seem to some too trivial to merit notice in con- 
nection with the more serious matters just consi- 
dered. One of these weaknesses is an anti-repub- 
lican fondness for titles ;* and whoever has lived 
in the old world, and knows the extraordinary 
and powerful influence which mere titles of honor 
exercise over the minds of men, and their tendency 
to keep in due subjection the artificial ranks into 
which despotic and aristocratic power divide the 
people, subduing the lower orders to their lords and 
masters, will not think it amiss in this place to draw 
attention to the subject. Republicans as we are, 
I fear we are influenced, in a greater degree than we 
are aware, by the high sounding epithets with which 
despotism and aristocracy surround their officers, to 
♦See Note H. 


INFLUENCE OF TITLES. 


67 


awe into reverence the ignorant multitude. A name 
having half a dozen titles for its avant couriers , and 
as many for its rear guard, swells into an importance, 
even in the estimation of our citizens, which the 
name alone, and especially the individual himself, 
could.never assume. Let Mr. Brown, or Mr. Smith, 
or any other intelligent, upright, active citizen, be 
elected president of a benevolent society, does he 
%excite the gaze of those who meet him, or inspire 
awe in the multitude ? No one regards him but as 
a respectable, useful member of the community. But 
let us learn that a gentleman, not half as intelligent, 
or upright, or active, is to land in our city who is 
announced as the “ Most Illustrious Archduke and 
Eminence his Imperial Highness the Cardinal and 
Archbishop of Olmutz , Rodolph, (this last is the 
gentleman’s real name) Highest Curator of the Leo- 
pold Foundation,” and although not half as capable 
in any respect as Mr. Brown, or Mr. Smith, or ten 
thousand other honest, untitled citizens among us, I 
very much fear that the Battery would be thronged, 
and the windows in Broadway would be in demand, 
and the streets filled with a gaping crowd to see a 
man who could have such a mighty retinue of glit- 
tering epithets about him. Yet this title-blazoned 
gentleman holds the same office as Mr. Brown or 


68 TITLES A GLOSS TO CHARACTER. 

Mr. Smith. Poor human nature ! Alas, for its weak- 
ness ?* 

Who is not struck with the difference of effect 
upon the imagination, when we describe a person 

thus : “ Mr. , a good-hearted old gentleman, 

rather weak in the head , who Jinds in the manufac- 
ture of sealing-wax one of the chief and most agree- 
able employments of his time ,” and when we should 
describe a man thus : “ His Imperial Majesty Fran- 
cis I., Emperor of Austria , King of Jerusalem , 
Hungary, Bohemia , of Lombardy and Venice, Dal- 
matia, Croatia, Sclavonia, Galizia, and Lodomiria, 
Archduke of Austria, Duke of Lorena, Salsburg, 
Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, Grand Prince of 
Transylvania, Margrave of Moravia, Count Prince of 
Hapsburg, and Tyrol,” &c. &c. — and yet these two 
descriptions belong to one and the same individual. 

There used to be a sound democratic feeling in 
the country, which spurned such glosses of charac- 
ter and frowned out of use mere glory-giving title . 
Austria, however, is gradually (as fast as it is 
thought safe) introducing these titled gentlemen into 
the country. Bishop Fenwick, a Catholic priest, 

* There is reason to believe we are reforming in this parti- 
cular, for we have now titled foreigners, respectable men, 
travellers in the country, and our press no longer lends itself 
to announce their unimportant presence or movements. 


POPERY CAUTIOUSLY INTRODUCING THEM. 


69 


is ** his Grace of Cincinnati ,” Mr. Vicar-General 
Rese, another priest, is only “ his Reverence,” and 
Bishop Flaget, and all the other Bishops, are simple 
Monseigneurs, this title in a foreign language being 
less harsh at present to republican ears than its 
plump, aristocratic English translation, “ My Lord 
Bishop of New- York,” “ My Lord Bishop of Bos- 
ton,” “ My Lord Bishop of Charleston,” &c. &c. 
&c. As we improve, however, under Catholic in- 
struction, we may come to be quite reconciled even 
to his Eminence Cardinal, so and so, and to all the 
other graduated fooleries, which are so well adapted 
to dazzle the ignorant. The scarlet carriage of a 
Cardinal, too, bedizzened with gold, and containing 
the sacred person of some Jesuit, all scarlet and hu- 
mility, as is at this day often seen in Rome, may yet 
excite our admiration as it rolls through our streets, 
and even a Pope, (for in these republican times in 
Italy, who knows but his Holiness may have leave of 
absence,) yes, even a Pope, a Vicegerent of God , 
the great divinely appointed appointer of Rulers, the 
very centre from which all titles emanate, may possi- 
bly in his scarlet and gold and jewel-decked equipage, 
astonish our eyes, and prostrate us on our knees as 
he moves down Broadway. To be sure some of 
his republican friends, now in strange holy alliance 
with his faithful subjects here, might find their Pro- 


70 


THE POLITICAL, NOT RELIGIOUS 


testant knees at first a little stiff, yet the Catholic 
schools which they are encouraging with their votes 
and their money and their influence, will soon fur- 
nish them good instructors in the art of reverential 
gesture, and genuflexion. 

Again, there are some minds of a peculiarly sen- 
sitive cast, that cannot bear to have the subject of 
religious opinion mooted in any way in the secular 
journals. They use a plausible argument that 
satisfies them, namely, that religion is too sacred a 
subject to be discussed by the daily press. I agree 
to a certain extent, and in a modified sense, with 
this sentiment, but it should be remembered that all 
is not religion which passes under that name. The 
public safety makes it necessary sometimes to strip 
off the disguise, and show the true character of a 
design which may have assumed the sacred cloak, 
the better to pass unchallenged by just such feeble 
hearted objectors. Were such objections valid, how 
easy would it be for the most dangerous political 
designs, (as in the case we are considering,) to as- 
sume a religious garb, and so escape detection. The 
exposure I am now making of the foreign designs 
upon our liberties, may possibly be mistaken for an 
attack on .the Religion of the Catholics, yet I have 
not meddled with the conscience of any Catholic ; 
if he honestly believes the doctrine of Transubstan - 


CHARACTER OF POPERY HERE DISCUSSED. 71 

tiation , or that by doing penance he will prepare 
himself for heaven, or in the existence of Purgatory , 
or in the efficacy of the prayers and masses of priests, 
to free the souls of his relatives from its flames, or 
that it is right to worship the Virgin Mary , or to 
pray to Saints or keep holy days, or to refrain from 
meat at certain times, or to go on pilgrimages , or in 
the virtue of relics , or that none but Catholics can he 
saved , or many other points ; however wrong I 
may and do think him to be, it is foreign from the 
design of these chapters, to speak against them. 
But when he proclaims to the world that all power 
temporal as well as spiritual exists in the Pope, 
(denying of course the fundamental doctrine of re- 
publicanism ;) that liberty of conscience is a “ raving,” 
and “ most pestilential error,” that “ he execrates and 
detests the liberty of the press',” when his intolerant 
creed asserts that no faith is to be kept with heretics, 
(all being heretics in the creed of a Catholic who 
are not Catholics,) and many other palpable anti- 
republican as well as immoral doctrines, he has then 
blended with his creed political tenets that vitally 
affect the very existence of our government, and no 
association with religious belief shall shield them 
from observation and rebuke. It would indeed be 
singular if these mere u ravings” (the Pope’s phrase 
is appropriate here,) subversive of the fundamental 


72 NOT TO BE SHIELDED BY A RELIGIOUS CLOAK. 

principles of our government, should be shielded from 
exposure because misnamed religion. If incendia- 
ries or robbers should ensconce themselves within 
a church, from the windows and towers of which 
they were assailing the people, the cry of sacrilege 
shall not prevent us from attempts to dislodge them* 
though the walls which protect them should suffer 
in the conflict. 


CHAPTER VII. 


The political character of this ostensibly religious enterprise 
proved from the letters of the Jesuits now in this country— 
Their antipathy to private judgment — Their anticipations 
of a change of our form of government— Our government 
declared too free for the exercise of their divine rights — 
Their political partialities — Their cold acknowledgment ot 
the generosity, and liberality, and hospitality of our govern- 
ment — Their estimate of our condition contrasted with their 
estimate of that of Austria — Their acknowledged allegiance 
and servility to a foreign master — Their sympathies with 
the oppressor, and not with the oppressed — Their direct 
avowal of political intention. 

Let me next show the political character of this 
ostensibly religious effort, from the sentiments of the 
Austrian emissaries expressed to their foreign pa- 
trons. The very nature of a conspiracy of this 
kind precludes the possibility of much direct evi- 
dence of political design ; for Jesuit cunning and 
Austrian duplicity would be sure to tread with un- 
usual caution on American ground. Yet if I can 
quote from their correspondence some expressions 
of antipathy to our free principles, and to the govern- 
ment ; some hinting at the subversion of the govern- 
ment ; prevailing partialities for arbitrary govern - 
7 


74 


PROOFS OF POLITICAL DESIGN 


merit ; and siding with tyranny against the oppressed ; 
and some acknowledgments of political effects to 
he expected from the operations of the society , I shall 
have exhibited evidence enough to put every citizen 
who values his birthright, upon the strict watch of 
these men and their adherents, and to show the im- 
portance of some measures of repelling this insidi- 
ous invasion of the country. 

The Bishop of Baltimore writing to the Austri- 
an Society, laments the wretched state of the Cath- 
olic religion in Virginia, and as a proof of the diffi- 
culty it has to contend with, (a proof doubtless 
shocking to the pious docility of his Austrian read- 
ers,) he says : 

“ I sent to Richmond a zealous missionary, a na- 
tive of America. He travelled through the whole 
of Virginia. The Protestants flocked on all sides 
to hear him, they offered him their churches, court- 
houses, and other public buildings, to preach in, 
which however is not at all surprising, for the peo- 
ple are divided into numerous sects, and know not 
what faith to embrace. In consequence of being 
spoiled by bad instruction, they will judge every 
thing themselves; they, therefore, hear eagerly every 
new comer,” &c. 

The Bishop, if he had the power, would of course 
change this “ had instruction ” for better, and, as in 


FROM THE LETTERS OF THE JESUITS. 


75 


Catholic countries, would relieve them from the 
trouble of judging for themselves . Thus the liberty 
of private judgment and freedom of opinion , guar- 
anteed by our institutions, are avowedly an obstacle 
to the success of the Catholics. Is it not natural 
that Catholics should desire to remove this obstacle 
out of their way ?* 

My Lord Bishop Flaget, of Bardstown, Ken- 
tucky, in a letter to his patrons abroad, has this 
plain hint at an ulterior political design , and that no 
less that the entire subversion of our republican 
government. Speaking of the difficulties and dis- 
couragements the Catholic missionaries have to con- 
tend with in converting the Indians, the last diffiulty 
in the way he says, is “ their continual traffic among 
the whites, which cannot be hindered as long 
AS THE REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT SHALL SUBSIST !” 


* A Catholic journal of this city, (the Register and Diary,) 
was put into my hands as I had completed this last para- 
graph. It contains the same sentiment, so illustrative of the 
natural abhorrence of Catholics to the exercise of private 
judgment, that I cannot forbear quoting it. 

“ We seriously advise Catholic parents to be very cautious 
in the choice of school-books for their children. There is more 
danger to be apprehended in this quarter, than could be con- 
ceived. Parents, we are aware, have not always the time or 
patience to examine these matters : but if they trust implicit- 
ly to us, we shall, with Gods help, do it for them. Legimus 
ne legantur .” We read, that they may not read ! ! 

How kind! they will save parents all the trouble of judg- 
ing for themselves, but “we must be trusted implicitly P l 
Would a Protestant journal thus dare to take liberties with its 
readers 1 


76 


PROOFS CONTINUED. 


What is this but saying, that a republican govern- 
ment is unfavorable in its nature to the restrictions 
we deem necessary to the extension of the Catholic 
religion ; when the time shall come that the present 
government shall be subverted, which we are look- 
ing forward to, or hope for, we can then hinder 
this traffic ? 

Mr. Baraga, the German missionary in Michi- 
gan, seems impressed with the same conviction of 
the unhappy influence of a free government upon 
his attempts to make converts to the church of 
Rome. In giving an account of the refusal of some 
persons to have their children baptized, he lays the 
fault on this, “ too free ( allzufreien ) government.” 
In a more despotic government, in Italy or Austria, 
he would have been able to put in force compulsory 
baptism on these children.* 

These few extracts are quite sufficient to show 
how our form of government, which gives to the 
Catholics all the freedom and facilities that other 
sects enjoy, does from its very nature embarrass 
their despotic plans. Accustomed to dictate at 
home, how annoying it is to these Austrian eccle- 
siastics to be obliged to put off their authority, to 
yield their divine right of judging for others, to be 
compelled to get at men through their reason and 


* See note I. 


POLITICAL PABTIALITIES OF THE JESUITS.' 77 

conscience, instead of the more summary way of 
compulsion ! The disposition to use force if they 
could, shows itself in spite of all their caution. 
The inclination is there. It is reined in by circum- 
stances. They want only strength to act out the 
inherent despotism of Popery. 

But let me show what are some of the 'political 
partialities which these foreign emissaries discover 
in their letters and statements to their Austrian sup- 
porters. They acknowledge their unsuspicious re- 
ception by the people of the United States ; they 
acknowledge that Protestants in all parts of the 
country have even aided them with money to build 
their chapels and colleges and nunneries, and treat- 
ed them with liberality and hospitality, and — strange 
infatuation ! ! — have been so monstrously foolish as 
to intrust their children to them to be educated ! 
so infatuated as to confide in their honor and in their 
promises that they would use no attempts to prose- 
lyte them ! And with all this, does it not once oc- 
cur to these gentleman, that this liberality, and gen- 
erosity and openness of character are the fruits of 
Protestant republicanism 1 Might we not expect at 
least that Popery, were it republican in its nature, 
would find something in all this that would excite 
admiration, and call forth some praise of a system 
so contrasted to that of any other government; 
7 * 


78 


THEIR ABUSE OF THIS COUNTRY. 


some acknowledgments to the government of the 
country that protects it, and allows its emissaries the 
unparalleled liberty even to plot the downfall of the 
state ? But no, the government of the United 
States is not once mentioned in praise. The very 
principle of the government, through which they are 
tolerated, is thus slightingly noticed : “The gov- 
ernment of the United States has thought fit to adopt 
a complete indifference toward all religions.”* They 
can recognize no nobler principle than indiffer- 
ence . 

Again, of the people of our country they thus 
write : “We intreat all European Christians to unite 
in prayer to God for the conversion of these unhap- 
py heathen , and obstinate heretics.” We are spoken 
of as a country “ on which the light of faith has 
hitherto not shined .” “ A vast country , destitute of 

all spiritual and temporal resources” But if Aus- 
tria is mentioned, what are the terms ? “ Your So- 

ciety, (the Leopold Foundation) which is an orna- 
ment to the illustrious Austrian Empire ,” — “ the 
nolle and generous inhabitants of the Austrian em- 
pire.” “ Of many circumstances in our condition, 
few perhaps in your happy empire can form a cor- 
rect notion and again, “ Here are many churches, 
if you may so call the miserable wooden buildings, 
♦ Quart. Regist. Feb. 1830, p. 198. 


THEIR SERVILITY TO AUSTRIA. 


70 


differing little from the barns of your happy land !” 
Austria , happy land ! ! How enthusiastic, too, is 
another Bishop, who writes, “ we cannot sufficiently 
praise our good Emperor (of Austria,) were we to 
extol him to the third heaven !” Such are the polit- 
ical' partialities which are discovered in various 
parts of these documents. Are they in favor of 
our republican darkness, and heathenism, and mis- 
ery, or of Austrian light, and piety and happiness? 

In the struggles of the European people for their 
liberty, do these foreign teachers sympathize with the 
oppressor or with the oppressed ? “ France no more 
helps us,” (Charles X. had just been dethroned,) 
“ and Rome, beset by enemies to the church and pub - 
lie order, is not in a condition to help us.” And 
who are these men stigmatized as enemies of public 
order ? They are the Italian patriots of the Revo- 
lution of 1831, than whom our own country in the 
perils of its own Revolution did not produce men 
more courageous, more firm, more wise, more 
tolerant, more patriotic ; men who had freed their 
country from the bonds of despotism in a struggle 
almost bloodless, for the people were with them ; 
men who, in the spirit of American patriots, were 
organizing a free government ; rectifying the abuses 
of Papal misrule, and who, in the few weeks of their 
power, had accomplished years of benefit. These 


80 OTHER DESPOTS INTERESTED IN THE ENTERPRISE. 


are the men afterwards dragged to death, or to pri- 
son by Austrian intruders, and styled by our Jesuits, 
enemies of public order ! Austria herself uses the 
self-same terms to stigmatize those who resist op- 
pression. 

I will notice one extract more, to which I would 
call the special attention of my readers. It is from 
one of the reports of the society in Lyons, which 
society had the principal management of American 
missions under Charles X. When this bigoted mon- 
arch was dethroned, and liberal principles reigned 
in France, the society so languished that Austria 
took the design more completely into her own hands, 
and through the Leopold Foundation she has the en- 
terprise now under her more immediate guardian- 
ship. 

(i Our beloved king (Charles X.) has given the 
society his protection, and has enrolled his name as 
a subscriber. Our society has also made rapid 
progress in the neighboring states of Piedmont and 
Savoy. The pious rulers of those lands, and the 
chief ecclesiastics, have given it a friendly recep- 
tion.” 

Charles X., be it noticed, and the despotic rulers 
of Piedmont and Savoy, took a special interest in 
this American enterprise. The report goes on to 
say — 


POLITICAL EFFECTS DIRECTLY AVOWED 81 

“Who can doubt that an institution which has 
a purely spiritual aim , whose only object is the con- 
version of' souls, desires nothing less than to make 
whole nations, on whom the light of faith has hither- 
to not shined, partakers of the knowledge of the 
gospel ; an institution solemnly sanctioned by the 
supreme head of the church : which, as we have 
already remarked, enjoys the protection of our 
pious monarch, the support of archbishops and 
bishops ; an institution established in a city under 
the inspection of officers, at whose head stands the 
great almoner, and which numbers among its mem- 
bers, men alike honorable for their rank in church 
and state ; an institution of which his excellency 
the minister of church affairs, lately said, in his 
place in the Chamber of Deputies, that, independent 
of its purely spiritual design , it was of great po- 
litical INTEREST.” 

Observe that great pains are here taken to im- 
press upon the public mind the purely spiritual aim t 
the purely spiritual design of the society, and yet 
one of the French ministers, in the Chamber of 
Deputies, states directly that it has another design, 
and that it was of “great political interest. ” 
— He gives some of these political objects — “ be- 
cause it planted the French name in distant coun- 
tries, caused it, by the mild influence of our mission- 


82 


BY A FRENCH MINISTER. 


aries, to be loved and honored, and thus opened to 
our trade and industry useful channels,” &c. Now 
if some 'political effects are already avowed as in- 
tended to be produced by this society, and that too, 
immediately after reiterating its purely spiritual de- 
sign , why may not that particular political effect be 
also intended, of far more importance to the interests 
of despotism, namely, the subversion of our Repub- 
lican institutions ? 


CHAPTER VIII. 


Some of the means by which Jesuits can already operate 
; politically in the country — By mob discipline — By •priest 
police — Their great danger — Already established — Proofs — 
Priests already rule the mob — Nothing in the principles of 
Popery to prevent its interference in our elections — Popery 
interferes at the present day in the politics of other countries 
— Popery the same in our country — It interferes in our elec- 
tions — In Michigan— In Charleston, S. C.— In New-York 
—Popery a political despotism cloaked under the name of 
Religion — It & Church and State embodied — Its character 
at head-quarters'in Italy — Its political character stripped of 
its religious cloak. 

But some of my readers, notwithstanding they 
may be convinced that it is for the interest of des- 
potism to subvert our institutions, and are even per- 
suaded that this grand enterprise has been actually 
undertaken, may be inclined to ask in what manner 
can the despots of Europe effect, by means of Po- 
pish emissaries, any thing in this country to counter- 
act the influence of our liberal institutions? In 
what way can they operate here ? 

With the necessity existing of doing something 
from the instinct of self-preservation , to check the 
influence of our free institutions on Europe, with 
the funds provided, and agents on the spot interest- 
ed in their plans, one would think it needed but lit- 


84 


COMPOSITION OP MOBS. 


tie sagacity to find modes and opportunities of ope- 
rating, especially too, when such vulnerable points 
as I have exposed, (and there are many more which 
I have not brought forward,) invite attack. 

To any such inquirers, let me say, there are 
many ways in which a body organized as are the 
Catholics, and moving in concert, might disturb (to 
use the mildest term) the good order of the repub- 
lic, and thus compel us to present to observing Eu- 
rope the spectacle of republican anarchy. Who is 
not aware that a great portion of that stuff which 
composes a mob, ripe for riot or excess of any 
kind, and of which we have every week or two, a 
fresh example in some part of the country, is a 
Catholic* population; and what makes it turbulent? 
Ignorance, an ignorance which it is for the interest 
of its leaders not to enlighten ; for enlighten a man 
and he will think for himself, and have some self- 
respect ; he will understand the laws and know his 
interest in obeying them. Keep him in ignorance, 
and he is the slave of the man who will flatter his 
passions and appetites, or awe him by superstitious 
fears. Against the outbreakings of such men, so- 
ciety, as it is constituted on our free system, can pro- 
tect itself only in one of two ways : it must either 
bring these men under the influence and control of 


* See note J. 


PRIEST POLICE. 


85 


a sound republican and religious education, or it must 
call in the aid of the priests who govern them, and 
who may permit , and direct , or restrain their turbu- 
lence, in accordance with what they may judge at 
any particular time to be the interest of the church . 
Yes, be it well remarked, the same hands that can, 
whenever it suits their interest, restrain , can also, at 
the proper time, “ let slip the dogs of war.” In this 
mode of restraint by a police of priests, by substi- 
tuting the ecclesiastical for the civil power, the priest- 
led mobs of Portugal and Spain, and South America, 
are instructive examples. And start not, American 
reader, this kind of police is already established in 
our country ! We have had mobs again and again, 
which neither the civil nor military power have 
availed any thing to quell, until the magic ‘ peace, 
be still ’ of the Catholic priest has hushed the winds, 
and calmed the waves of popular tumult.* While I 
write, what mean the negociations, between two 
Irish bands of emigrants, in hostile array against 
each other, shedding each other’s blood upon our 
soil, settling with the bayonet miserable foreign 
feuds which they have brought over the waters 
with them ? Why have not the civil and military 

* At the time this was written, riots in this country were al- 
most entirely confined to the emigrants from foreign countries 
employed as laborers on our rail-roads, canals, &c. 


8 


86 


RECENT EXERCISE OF ITS POWER. 


power been able to restore order among them, and 
obedience to our laws, without calling in the priests 
to negociate and settle the terms on which they will 
cease from violating our laws ?* Have the priests 


* As our readers have probably forgotten the particulars of 
the affair here alluded to, we subjoin from the Journal of Com- 
merce, a copy of the agreement subscribed by the leaders of 
the riot. The civil ana military authorities of Maryland had 
tried repeatedly, but in vain, to quell the riot. — Ed. Obs. 

From the Journal of Commerce. 

The Rioters. — It appears by the following notice, that the 
rioters on the Baltimore and Washington Rail-road have con- 
cluded a treaty of peace, through the intervention of a priest. 
There was considerable talk during the late riots in this city, 
of calling in the agency of the priests, to put an end to the 
disturbance. No doubt it would have been effectual. 


AGREEMENT. 

On the 24th of June, 1834, the subscribers, in the presence 
of the Rev. John McElroy, have respectively and mutually 
agreed to' bury forever, on their own part, and on behalf of 
their respective sections of country, all remembrance of feuds 
and animosities, as well as injuries sustained. They also 
promise to each other, and make a sincere tender of their in- 
tention to preserve peace, harmony, and good feeling between 
persons of every part of their native country without distinc- 
tion. 

They further mutually agree to exclude from their houses 
and premises all disorderly persons of every kind, and particu- 
larly habitual drunkards. They are also resolved, and do in- 
tend to apply in all cases where it is necessary, to the civil 
authorities, or to the laws of the country for redress — and 
finally they are determined to use their utmost endeavors to 
enforce, by word and example, these, their joint and unani- 
mous resolutions. 

Signed by fourteen of the men employed K . A , r - „ 
on the 4th, 5th, and 8th sections of the ( on behalf of , aH 
2d division, B. and W. R. R. ) employed. 

And also by thirteen of the 8th section of \ on behalf of all 
the 1st division. $ employed. 


POPERY INTERFERES IN FOREIGN POLITICS. 87 

become necessary in our political system ? Have 
the emissaries of a foreign despotic power stolen 
this march upon us ? Can they tell their foreign 
masters, “we already rule the mob?” Yes, and 
facts will bear them out in their boasting.* 

And what now prevents the interference of 
Catholics as a sect directly in the political elections 
of the country ? They are organized under their 
priests : Is there any thing in their religious princi- 
ples to restrain them? Do not Catholics of the 
present day use the bonds of religious union to effect 
political objects in other countries ? Did not the 
Pope interfere in Poland in the late revolution, and 
through the priests command submission to the ty- 
ranny of the Czar. At the moment I am writing, 
are not monks and priests leaders in the field of 
battle in Spain ; in Portugal ? Is not the Pope en- 
couraging the troops of Don Miguel, and exciting 
priests and people to arras in a civil contest ? Has 
Popery abandoned its ever busy meddling in the 
politics of the countries where it obtains foothold ?f 
Will it be said, that however officious in the old 
countries, yet here, by some strange metamorpho- 
sis, Popery has changed its character, and is modi- 
fied by our institutions ; that here it is surely reli- 
gious, seeking only the religious welfare of the 

t See note L. 


* See note K, 


88 POPERY INTERFERES IN OUR POLITICS. 

people, that it does not meddle with the state ?* It 
is not true that Popery meddles not with the politics 
of the country. The cloven foot has already shown 
itself. Popery is organized at the elections ! For 
example : In Michigan the Bishop Richard, a Jesuit^ 
(since deceased,) was several times chosen delegate 
to Congress from the Territory, the majority of the 
people being Catholics. As Protestants became 
more numerous, the contest between the bishop and 
his Protestant rival was more and more close, until 
at length by the increase of Protestant immigration 
the latter triumphed. The bishop, in order to detect 
any delinquency in his flock at the polls, had his 
ticket printed on colored paper ; whether any were 
so mutinous as not to vote according to orders, or 
what penance was inflicted for disobedience, I did 
not learn. The fact of such a truly Jesuitical mode 
of espionage I have from a gentleman resident at 
that time in Detroit. Is not a fact like this of some 
importance ? Does it not show that Popery, with 
all its speciousness, is the same here as elsewhere ; 
it manifests, when it has the opportunity, its genuine 
disposition to use spiritual power for the promotion of 
its temporal ambition. It uses its ecclesiastical wea- 
pons to control an election. 

In Charleston, S. C., the Roman Catholic Bishop 
* See note M. 


POPERY A POLITICAL SYSTEM, CLOAKED BY RELIGION. 89 

England is said to have boasted of the number of 
votes that he could control at an election. I have 
been informed, on authority which cannot be doubted 
that in New- York, a priest, in a late election for 
city officers, stopped his congregation after mass on 
Sunday and urged the electors not to vote for a par- 
ticular candidate, on the ground of his being an anti- 
Catholic ; the result was the election of the Catholic 
candidate. 

It is unnecessary to multiply facts of this nature 
nor will it be objected that these instances are un- 
worthy of notice, because of their local or circum- 
scribed character. Surely American Protestants, 
freemen, have discernment enough to discover be- 
neath them the cloven foot of this subtle foreign 
heresy, and will not wait for a more extensive, dis- 
astrous, and overwhelming political interference, 
ere they assume the attitude of watchfulness and de- 
fence. They will see that Popery is now, what it 
has ever been, a system of the darkest ‘political in- 
trigue and despotism, cloaking itself to avoid attack 
under the sacred name of religion. They will be 
deeply impressed with the truth, that Popery is a 
political as well as a religious system ; that in this 
respect it differs totally from all other sects, from all 
other forms of religion in the country 1 Popery em - 
bodies in itself the closest union or Church and 
8 * 


90 


ITS CHARACTER AT HEAD-QUARTERS. 


State. Observe it at the fountain head. In the 
Roman States the civil and ecclesiastical offices are 
blended together in the same individual. The 
Pope is the King. A Cardinal is Secretary of State. 
The Consistory of Cardinals is the Cabinet Council , 
the Ministry , and they are Viceroys in the provin- 
ces. The Archbishops are Ambassadors to foreign 
courts. The Bishops are Judges and Magistrates , 
and the road to preferment to most if not all the 
great offices of State is through the priesthood. In 
Rome and the patrimony of St. Peter the temporal 
and spiritual powers are so closely united in the 
same individual, that no attack can be made on any 
temporal misrule, without drawing down upon the 
assailants the vengeance of the spiritual power ex- 
ercised by the same individual. Is the Judge cor- 
rupt or oppressive ; and do the people rise against 
him, the Judge retires into the Bishop, and in 
his sacred retreat cries “ Touch not the Lord’s 
anointed.” 

Can we not discern the political character of Po- 
pery ? Shall the name of Religion, artfully con- 
nected with it, still blind our eyes ? Let us suppose 
a body of men to combine together, and claim as 
their right, that all public and private property, of 
whatever kind , is held at their disposal ; that they 
alone are to judge of their own right to dispose of it ; 


STRIPPED OP ITS RELIGIOUS CLOAK. 


91 


that they alone are authorized to think or speak on the 
subject ; that they who speak or write in opposition to 
them are traitors , and must he put to death ; that all 
temporal power is secondary to theirs and amenable 
to their superior and infallible judgment; and the 
better to hide the presumption of these tyrannical 
claims, suppose that these men should pretend to 
divine right and call their system Religion , and so 
claim the protection of our laws, and pleading con- 
science , demand to be tolerated. Would the name 
of Religion be a cloak sufficiently thick to hide such 
absurdity, and shield it from the frown of public in- 
dignation ? Take then from Popery its name of Re- 
ligion , strip its officers of their pompous titles of sa- 
credness, and its decrees of the nauseous cant of 
piety,* and what have you remaining ? Is it not a 
naked, odious Despotism, depending for its strength 
on the observance of the strictest military discipline 
in its ranks, from the Pope, through his Cardinals, 
Archbishops, Bishops, &,c., down to the lowest 
priest of his dominions ? And is not this despotism 
acting politically in this country ? 

Let us suppose, for the sake of illustration, that 
the Emperor of Russia, in a conceited dream of di- 

* Through the Leopold foundation reports there is this per- 
petual cant of piety. We have “ pious prelate,” “pious pur- 
pose,” “pious end,” “pious curiosity,” “pious dread,” and 
even “pious progress,” and “ pious dress.” 


92 illustration of the religious disguise of fopert. 

vine right to universal empire, should parcel out our 
country into convenient districts, and should proclaim 
his intention to exercise his rightful sway over these 
States, now not owning his control. Should we not 
justly laugh at his ridiculous pretensions ? But sup- 
pose he should proceed to appoint his Viceroys , 
Grand Imperial Dukes , giving to one the title of 
“ his Grace of Albany to another the “ Grand Duke 
of Washington ,” and to another “ his Imperial High - 
ness of Savannah,” and should send them out to take 
possession of their districts, and subdue the people 
as fast as practicable to their proper obedience to 
his legitimate sway. And should these pompous 
Viceroys, with their train of sub-officers, actually 
come over from Russia, and erect their government 
houses, and commence by compliant manners and 
fair promises to procure lands and rentals to hold 
in the power of the Emperor, and under the guise 
of educating the rising generation should begin to 
sap the foundations of their attachment to this gov- 
ernment, by blinding their reasoning faculties, and 
by the Russian catechism instilling the doctrine 
of passive obedience and the divine right of the Em- 
peror, what should we say to all this ? Ridiculous 
as the first conceited dream of imperial ambition 
appeared, if matters got to this pass, we should begin 
to think that there was something serious in the at- 


ILLUSTRATION CONTINUED. 


93 


tempt, and very properly too, be a little alarmed. 
Suppose then further that the Emperor’s cause, by 
Russian emigration, and the money supplied by the 
Emperor, had become so strong that the Viceroys 
were emboldened in a cautious way, to try their in- 
fluence upon some of the local elections, that the 
Russian party had become a body somewhat formi- 
dable, that its foreign leaders had their passive obe- 
dience troops, so well under command as to make 
themselves necessary in the police of the country, 
that we feared to offend them , that the secular press 
favored them ;* and the unprincipled courted them ; 
to what point then, in the process of gradually sur- 
rendering our liberties to the Russian Czar, should 
we have come ; and how near to their accomplish- 
ment would be those wild dreams of imperial ambi- 
tion, which we had in the first instance ridiculed ? 

And is this a caricature ? What is the differ- 
ence between the real claims, and efforts, and con- 
dition of Popery at this moment in these United 
States, and the supposed claims, and efforts, and 
condition of the Russian despotism? The one 
comes disguised under the name of Religion , the 

* Is this a harsh judgment on the secular press? If a 
secular paper ventures to remonstrate against Catholics, is not 
the cry of intolerance or -persecution at once raised and the 
editor scared away from his duty of exposing the secret politi- 
cal enemies of the republic, under the false notion that he is 
engaged in a Religious controversy ? 


94 THE POLITICAL CHARACTER OF POPERY MANIFEST. 

other, more honest and more harmless, would come 
in its real "political name. Give the latter the name 
of Religion , call the Emperor , Pope, and his Vice- 
roys, Bishops, interlard the imperial decrees with 
pious cant, and you have the case of pretension, and 
intrigue, and success too which has actually passed 
in these United States ! Yes, the King of Rome, 
acting by the promptings of the Austrian Cabinet, 
and in the plentitude of his usurpation, has already 
extended his sceptre over our land, he has divided 
us up into ’provinces, and appointed his Viceroys 
who claim their jurisdiction ,* from a higher power 
than exists in this country, even from his majesty 
himself, who appoints them, who removes them at 
will, to whom they owe allegiance, for the extension 
of whose temporal kingdom they are exerting them- 
selves, and whose success let it be indelibly im- 
pressed on your minds, is the certain destruction of 
the free institutions of our country. 

* “ Indiana and Illinois, two states depending on my Juris- 
diction f [My Lord Bishop Flaget’s letter.] 


CHAPTER IX. 


Evidence enough of conspiracy adduced to create great alarm 
— The cause of liberty universally demands that we should 
awake to a sense of danger— An attack is made which is to 
try the moral strength of the republic — The mode of defence 
that might be consistently recommended by Austrian Pope- 
ry — A mode now in actual operation in Europe— Contrary 
to the entire spirit of American Protestantism — True mode 
of defence — Popery must be opposed by antagonist institu- 
tions — Ignorance mustibe dispelled — Popular ignorance of 
all Papal countries— Popery the natural enemy of general 
education — Popish efforts to spread education in the tJnited 
States delusive. 

Is not the evidence I have exhibited in my pre- 
vious numbers sufficiently strong to prove to my 
countrymen the existence of a foreign conspiracy 
against the liberties of the country ? Does the na- 
ture of the case admit of stronger evidence? or 
must we wait for some positive, undisguised acts of 
oppression, before we will believe that we are at- 
tacked and in danger ? Must we wait for a formal 
declaration of war ? The serpent has already com- 
menced his coil about our limbs, and the lethargy of 
his poison is creeping over us ; shall we be more 
sensible of the torpor when it has fastened upon our 
vitals ? The house is on fire ; can we not believe 


96 WE MUST WAKE TO A SENSE OF DANGER. 

it, till the flames have touched our flesh ? Is not 
the enemy already organized in the land ? Can we 
not perceive all around us the evidence of his pres- 
ence ? Have not the wily manceuverings of des- 
potism already commenced ? Is he not inveigling 
our children to his schools ? Is he not intriguing 
with the press? Is he not usurping the police 
of the country, and showing his front in our po- 
litical councils ? Because no foe is on the sea, no 
hostile armies on our plains, may we sleep securely ? 
Shall we watch only on the outer walls, while the 
sappers and miners of foreign despots are at work 
under our feet, and stealthily advancing beneath the 
very citadel ? Where is that unwearying vigilance 
which 'the eloquent Burke proclaimed to be the 
characteristic of our fathers, who did not wait to 
feel oppression, but “ augured misgovernment at a 
distance , and snuffed the approach of tyranny in 
every tainted breeze ?” Are we their sons, and shall 
we sleep on our posts ? We may sleep, but the 
enemy is awake; he is straining every nerve to 
possess himself of our fair land. We must awake, 
or we are lost. Foundations are attacked, funda- 
mental principles are threatened, interests are put 
in jeopardy, which throw all the questions which 
now agitate the councils of the country into the 
shade. It is Liberty itself that is in danger, not the 


THE MORAL STRENGTH OF THE REPUBLIC ATTACKED. 97 


liberty of a single state, no, nor of the United States, 
but the liberty of the world . Yes, it is the world 
that has its anxious eyes upon us ; it is the world 
that cries to us in the agony of its struggles against 
despotism, the World expects America, republi- 
can America, to do her duty. 

Our institutions have already withstood many as- 
saults from within and from without, but the war has 
now assumed a new shape. An effort is now ma- 
king that is to try the moral strength of the Re- 
public . It is not a physical contest on the land, or 
on the water. The issue depends not on the strength 
of our armies or navies. How then shall we defend 
ourselves from this new , this subtle attack ? 

“Defend yourselves !” cries the Austrian papist, 
“ you cannot defend yourselves your government, 
in its very nature, is not strong enough to protect 
you against foreign or domestic conspiracy. You 
must here take a lesson from legitimate govern- 
ments. We alone can teach the effectual method 
of suppressing conspiracies. You say you have a 
body of conspirators against your liberties, a body 
of foreigners who are spreading their pernicious 
heresies through your land, and endangering the 
state. The weakness of republicanism is now man- 
ifest. What constitutional or legal provision meets 
the difficulty ? Where are your laws prohibiting 
9 


98 


PAPAL MODE OF GUARDING THE STATE. 


Catholics from preaching or teaching their doctrines, 
and erecting their chapels, churches, and schools ? 
Where is your Passport system , to enable you to 
know the movements of every man of them in the 
land ? Where is your Gens d'armerie , your armed 
police, those useful agents, whose domiciliary visits 
could ferret out every Catholic, seize and examine 
his papers, and keep him from further mischief in 
the dungeons of the state ? Where are your laws 
that can terrify, by the penalty of imprisonment , any 
man that dares to utter an opinion against the gov- 
ernment ? Where is your judicious censorship of 
the press , to silence the Catholic journals, and stifle 
any Catholic sentiments in other journals ? Where 
is your Index expurgatorius , to denounce all unsafe 
books, that no Catholic book may be printed or ad- 
mitted into the country? Where is your system 
of espionage, that no Protestant may read a Catholic 
publication, or express in conversation a single sen- 
timent unfavorable to Protestantism, without being 
overlooked, and overheard by some faithful spy, 
and reported to the government ? Where are the 
officers in your post-office department for the secret 
examination of letters, so that even the most confi- 
dential correspondence may be purified from danger- 
ous heresy? Where is your secret Inquisitorial 
Court for the trial and condemnation of apostate 


A MODE NOW IN ACTUAL OPEBATION IN EUROPE. 09 

Protestants? Without these changes in the consti- 
tution and laws of your government, you can op- 
pose no efficient obstacle to the success of this con- 
spiracy. 

And what shall I reply to this consistent Papist ? 
The methods he would prescribe have the sanction 
of successful experiment for some centuries. They 
cire in sober truth the very means that Popery employs 
at this very day, in the countries where it is domi- 
nant, to prevent the spread of opinions contrary to 
its own dogmas. 

But are these the methods that commend them- 
selves to American Protestants ? Does not such a 
cumbrous machinery of chains, and bolts, and bay- 
onets, and soldiers, to hold the mind in bondage, seem 
rather a dream of the dark ages, than a real system, 
now in actual operation in the nineteenth century ? 
Away with Austrian and Popish precedent. Amer- 
ican Protestantism is of a different school. It needs 
none of the aids which are indispensable to the crum- 
bling despotisms of Europe ; no soldiers, no restric- 
tive enactments, no index expurgatorius, no Inquisi- 
tion. This war is the war of principles ; it is on 
the open field of free discussion ; and the victory is 
to be won by the exercise of moral energy, by the 
force of Religious and Political Truth. But still it 
is a war , and all true patriots must wake to the cry 


100 THE living pbinciple of our institutions. 


of danger. They must up, and gird themselves for 
battle. It is no false alarm. Our liberties are in 
danger. The Philistines are upon us. Their bonds 
are prepared, and they intend, if they can, to fasten 
them upon our limbs. We must shake off our leth- 
argy, and like the giant awaking from his sleep, snap 
these shackles asunder. We are attacked in vul- 
nerable points by foreign enemies to all liberty. 
We must no longer indulge a quiet complacency in 
our institutions, as if there were a charm in the sim- 
ple name of American liberty sufficiently potent to 
repel all invasion. For what constitutes the life of 
our justly cherished institutions ? Where is the liv- 
ing principle that sustains them ? Is it in the air we 
breathe ? Is it in the soil we cultivate ? Is our air 
or our soil more congenial to liberty than the air and 
soil of Austria, or Italy, or Spain ? No ! The life 
of our institutions ! It is a moral and intellectual 
life ; it lies in the culture of the human mind and 
heart, of the reason and conscience ; it is bound up 
in principles which must be taught by father to son, 
from generation to generation, with care, with toil, 
with sacrifice. Hide the Bible for fifty years — (we 
will not ask for the hundred years so graciously 
granted by the autocrat to stifle liberty) — hide the 
Bible for fifty years, and let our children be under 
the guidance of men, whose first exercise upon the 


TRUE MODE OF OUR DEFENCE. 


101 


youthful mind is to teach that lesson of old school 
sophistry, which distorts it forever, and binds it 
through life in bonds of error to the dictation of a 
man ; a man whom, in the same exercise of distort- 
ed reason, he is persuaded to believe infallible ; let 
these Jesuit doctors take the place of our Protestant 
instructors, and where will be the political institutions 
of the country ? Fifty years would amply suffice 
to give the victory to the despotic principle, and 
realize the most sanguine wishes of the tyrants of 
Europe. 

The first thing to be done to secure safety, is to 
open our eyes at once to the reality and the extent 
of the danger . We must not walk on blindly, cry- 
ing “ all’s well.” The enemy is in all our borders. 
He has spread himself through all the land. The 
ramifications of this foreign plot are every where 
visible to all who will open their eyes. Surprising 
and unwelcome as is such an announcement, we 
must hear it and regard it. We must make an im- 
mediate, A VIGOROUS, A UNITED, A PERSEVERING 
EFFORT TO SPREAD RELIGIOUS AND INTELLECTUAL 
CULTIVATION THROUGH EVERY PART OF OUR COUN- 
TRY. Not a village, nor a log-hut of the land 
should be overlooked. Where Popery has put 
darkness, we must put light. Where Popery has 
planted its crosses, its colleges, its churches, itscha- 
9 * 


102 


POPERY IN FAVOR OF IGNORANCE. 


pels, its nunneries, Protestant patriotism must put 
side by side college for college, seminary for semina- 
ry, church for church. And the money must not 
be kept back. Does Austria send her tens of thou- 
sands to subjugate us to the principles of darkness ? 
We must send our hundreds of thousands, aye our 
millions, if necessary, to redeem our children from 
the double bondage of spiritual and temporal slave- 
ry, and preserve to them American light and liber- 
ty. The food of Popery is ignorance. Ignorance 
is the mother of papal devotion. Ignorance is the 
legitimate prey of Popery. 

But some one here asks, are not the Roman 
Catholics establishing schools and colleges, and 
seminaries of various kinds, in the destitute parts of 
the land ? Are not they also zealous for education ? 
May we not safely assist them in their endeavors to 
enlighten the ignorant ? Enlighten the ignorant ? 
Does Popery enlighten the ignorant of Spain, of Por- 
tugal, of Italy, of Ireland, of South America, of 
Canada ? What sort of instruction is that, in the 
latter country, for example, which leaves 78,000 out 


of 87,000 of its grown up scholars signers of a peti- 
tion by their mark , unable to write their own names, 
and many of the remaining signers, who write nothing 
but their names . What sort of light is that which 
generates darkness? Popery enlighten the igno- 


THE NATURAL ENEMT OF GENERAL EDUCATION. 103 


rant? Popery is the natural enemy of general ed- 
ucation. Do you ask for proof? It is overwhelm- 
ing. Look at the intellectual condition of all the 
countries where Popery is dominant. If Popery is 
in favor of general education, why are the great 
mass of the people, in the papal countries I have 
named, the most ill-informed, mentally degraded be- 
ings of all the civilized world, arbitrarily shut out 
by law from all knowledge but that which makes 
them slaves to the tyranny of their oppressors ? No ! 
Jook well to it ! If Popery in this country is pro- 
fessing friendship to general knowledge, it is a 
feigned alliance. If it pretends to be in favor of 
educating the poor , it is a false pretence, it is only 
temporizing. It is conforming for the present, from 
policy to the spirit of Protestantism around it, that 
it may forge its chains with less suspicion. If it is 
establishing schools, it is to make them prisons of 
the 'youthful intellect of the country. If the Pa- 
pists in Europe are really desirous of enlightening 
ignorant Americans, by establishing schools, let 
them make their first efforts among their brethren of 
the same faith in Canada and Mexico. 

Do our fellow citizens at the South and West 
ask for schools, and are there not funds and teachers 
enough in our own land of wealth and education to 
train up our own offspring in the free principles of 


104 


WE MUST SPREAD EDUCATION. 


our own institutions 1 or are we indeed so beggared 
as to be dependent on the charities of the Holy Alli- 
ance, and the Jesuits of Europe for funds and teach- 
ers to educate our youth — in what ? The principles 
of despotism ! Forbid it patriotism ! Forbid it reli- 
gion ! — Our own means are sufficient ; we have 
wealth enough, and teachers in abundance. We 
have only to will it with the resolution and the zeal 
that have so often been shown, whenever great na- 
tional, or moral interests are to be subserved, and ev- 
ery fortress, every corps of Austrian darkness would 
be surrounded : the lighted torches of truth, poli- 
tical and religious, would flash their unwelcome 
beams into every secret chamber of the enemies of 
our liberty, and drive these ill-omened birds of a 
foreign nest to their native hiding-place. 


CHAPTER X 


All classes of citizens interested in resisting the efforts of Po- 
pery — The unnatural alliance of Popery and Democracy ex- 
posed— Religious liberty in danger — Specially in the keeping 
of the Christian community — They must rally for its defence, 
— The secular press has no sympathy with them in this strug- 
gle, it is opposed to them— The Political character of Po- 
pery ever to be kept in mind and opposed — It is for the Pa- 
pist, not the Protestant to separate his religious from his 
political creed — Papists ought to be required publicly and 
formally and officially to renounce foreign allegiance and 
anti-republican customs. 

In considering the means of counteracting this 
foreign political conspiracy against our free institu- 
tions, I have said that we must awake to the reality 
and extent of the danger , and rouse ourselves to 
immediate and vigorous action in spreading reli- 
gious and intellectual cultivation through the land. 
This indeed would be effectual, but this remedy is 
remote in its operation, and is most seriously retard- 
ed by the enormous increase of ignorance which is 
flooding the country by foreign immigration. While 
therefore the remote effects of our exertions are 
still provided for, the pressing exigency of the case 
seems to require some more immediate efforts to pre- 


106 POPERY DOUBLY OPPOSED TO ALL OUR INSTITUTIONS. 

vent the further spread of the evil. The two-fold 
character of the enemy who is attacking us must 
be well considered. Popery is doubly opposed, — 
civilly and religiously , — to all that is valuable in our 
free institutions. As a religious system, it is the 
avowed and common enemy of every other religious 
sect in the land. The Episcopalian, the Methodist,, 
the Presbyterian, the Baptist, the Quaker, the Uni- 
tarian, the Jew, &c. &c., are alike anathematized, 
are together obstinate heretics , in the creed of the 
Papist. He wages an indiscriminate, uncompromis- 
ing, exterminating war with all. 

As a Political system, it is opposed to every 
political party in the country. Popery in its very 
nature is opposed to the genius of our free system, 
notwithstanding its affected, artful appropriation (in 
our country only,) of the habits and phraseology of 
democracy. Present policy alone dictates so ww- 
natural an alliance, aye, most unnatural alliance . 
What ! Popery and Democracy allied ? Despotism 
and Liberty hand in hand ? Has the Sovereign 
Pontiff in very deed turned Democrat in the United 
States 1 Let us look into this incongruous coalition, 
this solecism in politics — Popish Democracy. Do 
Popish Bishops or Priests consult the people? Have 
the people any voice in ecclesiastical matters ? Can 
the people vote their own taxes ? or are they im- 


ALLIANCE OF POPERY AND DEMOCRACY EXPOSED. 107 


posed upon them by irresponsible priests? Do the 
bishops and priests account for the manner in which 
they spend the people's money ? Has Popery here 
adopted the American principle of Responsibility 
to the People ; a responsibility which gives the 
most insignificant contributor of his money towards 
any object, a right to examine into the manner in 
which it is disbursed. No ! the people account to 
their priests in all cases , not the priests to the people 
in any case . What sort of Democracy is that where 
the people have no power , and the priests have all , by 
divine right ? Let us hear no more of the presump- 
tuous claim of Popery to Democracy. — Popery is 
the antipodes of Democracy. It is the same petty 
tyrant of the people here, as in Europe. And this 
is the tyranny that hopes to escape detection by as- 
suming the name and adopting the language of de- 
mocracy.* It is this tyranny that is courted and 
favored at political elections by our politicians of all 
parties, because it has the advantage of a despotic 
organization.! How much longer are the feelings 
of the religious community to be scandalized, and 

* See note N. 

t And infidelity too, it seems, has just learned the secret of 
political power, and not content with civil and religious lib- 
erty, has introduced a third kind, and organizing itself into a 
new interest, demands to be represented in the state as the 
advocate of irreligious liberty ! 


108 


RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN DANGER. 


their moral sense outraged, by the bare-faced bar- 
gainings for Catholic and infidel votes ? Have the 
religious community no remedy against such out- 
rage? If they have not, if there is not a single 
point on which they can act together, if the reli- 
gious denominations of various names can have no 
understanding on matters of this kind, if they have 
no common bond to unite them in repelling common 
enemies, then let us boast no more of religious lib- 
erty. What is religious liberty ? Is it merely a 
phrase to round a period in a fourth of July oration? 
Is it a dazzling sentiment for Papists to use in blind- 
ing the eyes of the people, while they rivet upon 
them their foreign chains of superstition ? Is it a 
shield to be held before Infidels, from behind which,, 
they may throw their poisoned shafts at all that is 
orderly and fair in our civil as well as religious in- 
stitutions ? Or is it that prize above all price, that 
heaven -descended gift to the world, for which, with 
its twin sister, we contended in our war for inde- 
pendence, and which we are bound by every duty to 
ourselves, to our children, to our country, to the 
world, to guard with the most jealous care ? And has 
it ever occurred to Christians that this duty of guard- 
ing religious liberty in a more special manner devolves 
on them ? Who but the religious community appre- 
ciate the inestimable value of religious liberty ? — 


THE SECULAR PRESS AS UNFAITHFUL WATCHMAN. 109 

Are their interests safe in the hands of the infidel, 
who scoffs at all religion, and uses his civil liberty 
to subvert all liberty ? Is it safe in the hands of 
imported radicals and blasphemers ? Is it safe in 
the hands of calculating, selfish, power-seeking 
politicians? Is it safe in the keeping of Metter- 
nich’s stipendiaries, the active agents of a foreign 
despotic power ? Does the secular press take care 
of our religious liberty ? Is there a secular journal 
that has even hinted to its readers the existence of 
this double conspiracy ? The most dangerous po- 
litico-religious sect that ever existed, a sect that has 
been notorious for ages, for throwing governments 
into confusion, is politically at work, in our own 
country, under the immediate auspices of the most 
despotic power of Europe, interested politically and 
vitally in the destruction of our free institutions, and 
is any alarm manifested by the secular press ? No l 
they are altogether silent on this subject. They 
presume it is only a religious controversy, and they 
cannot meddle with religious controversies. They 
must not expose religious .imposture, lest they should 
be called pious. They have no idea of blending 
church and state. They have a religion of their 
own, a worship in which the public, they think, feel 
a more exciting interest. One has a liberty pole to 
be erected, another a hickory tree , and the rival pre- 
10 


1 1 0 THE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY MUST GUARD THEIR RIGHTS, 

tensions to superiority of these wooden gods of their 
idolatry, it is of the last importance to settle, and 
the bacchanalian revelry of their consecration must 
be recorded and blazoned forth in italics and capi- 
tals in its minutest particulars. “ Oh Pole ! oh 
Tree ! thou art the preserver of our liberty !” No ; 
If the religious community , (in which term I mean to 
include Protestants of every name who profess a re- 
ligious faith,) awake not to the defence of their own 
rights in the state, if they indulge timidity or jeal- 
ousy of each other, if they will not come forward 
boldly and firmly to withstand the encroachments of 
corruption upon their own rights ; the selfish poli- 
ticians of the factions of the day (and they swarm 
in the ranks of all parties,) will bargain away all 
that is valuable in the country, civil and religious, 
to the Pope, to Austria, or to any foreign power that 
will pay them the price of their treason. 

We cannot be too often reminded of the double 
character of the enemy who has gained foothold 
upon our shores, for' although Popery is a religious 
sect, and on this ground claims toleration side by 
side with other religious sects, yet Popery is also a 
political , a despotic system , which we must repel as 
altogether incompatible with the existence of free- 
dom. I repeat it, Popery is a political , a despotic 
system, which must be resisted by all true patricrts. 


DILEMMA OF PAPISTS. 


Ill 


Is it asked, how can we separate the characters 
thus combined in one individual ? How can we re- 
pel the politics of a Papist, without infringing upon 
his religious right ? I answer, that this is a diffi- 
culty for Papists, not for Protestants to solve. If 
Papists have made their religion and despotism iden- 
tical, that is not our fault. Our religion, the Prot- 
estant religion , and Liberty are identical, and 
liberty keeps no terms with despotism. American 
Protestants use no such solecism as religious despot- 
ism. Shall political heresy be shielded from all at- 
tack, because it is connected with a religious creed ? 
Let Papists separate their religious faith from their 
political faith, if they can, and the former shall suffer 
no political attack from us. “ But no,” the Papist 
cries, “ I cannot separate them ; my religion is so 
blended with the political system, that they must be 
tolerated or refused together ; my 4 whole system is 
one, and indivisible , unchangeable, infallible ’ — I am 
conscientious, I cannot separate them.” What are 
we to^doiivsuch a case ? Are-werto surrender our 
civil and religious liberty to such presumptuous 
folly 1 

No! our liberties must be preserved ; and we 
say., and say firmly to the Popish Bishops and 
Priests among us, give us your declaration of your 
relation to our civil government . Renounce your 


112 THEY MUST RENOUNCE FOREIGN ALLEGIANCE. 

foreign allegiance , your allegiance to a Foreign 
Sovereign. Let us have your own avowal in an 
official manifesto , that the Democratic Government 
under which you here live , delights you best. Put 
your ecclesiastical doings upon as open and popular 
a footing* as the other sects . Open your books to the 
people , that they may scrutinize your financial matters , 
that the people , your own people , may know how much 
they pay to priests , and how the priests expend their 
money ; that the poorest who is taxed from his hard 
earned wages for church dues , aud the richest who 
gives his gold to support your extravagant ceremo- 
nial , may equally know that their contributions are not 
misapplied . Come out and declare your opinion on 
the Liberty of the Press, on Liberty of Con- 
science, and Liberty of Opinion, Americans de- 
mand it. They are waking up. They have their 
eyes upon you. Think not the American eagle is 
asleep. Americans are not Austrians to be hood- 
winked by Popish tricks. This is a call upon you, 
you will be obliged soon to regard. Nor will they 
be content with partial, obscure avowals of repub 
lican sentiments in your journals, by insulated 
priests or even bishops. The American people 
will require a more serious testimonial of your 
opinions on these fundamental political points, 'fou 
have had Convocations of Bishops at Baltimore . 


THE PROBABLE CONSISTENCY OP THE DOCUMENT. H3 


Let us have at their next assembling their senti- 
ments on these vital points. Let us have a docu- 
ment full and explicit , signed by their names , a doc- 
ument that may circulate as well in Austria, and 
Italy , as in America. Aye, a document that may be 
published “ Con permissione” in the Diario di Roma , , 
^ind be circulated to instruct the faithful in the united 
church , the church of but one mind , in the senti- 
ments of American democratic Bishops on these 
American principles. Let us see how they will ac- 
cord with those of his Holiness Pope Gregory XVI . 
in his late encyclical letter ! Will Popish Bishops 
•dare to put forth such a manifesto ? No ! They 
dare noL 


10 * 


' ... ' 

* 

% 

•i* 

’ 

V. ' 




























CHAPTER XI. 


The question, what is the duty of the Protestant community, 
considered— Shall there be an Anti-Popery Union?— The 
strong manifesto that might be put forth by such a union 
—Such a political union discarded as impolitic and degrad- 
ing to the Protestant community — Golden opportunity for 
showing the moral energy of the Republic — The lawful, effi- 
cient weapons of this contest — To be used without delay. 

There is no question of more pressing, more 
vital importance to the whole country, than this : 
What is the duty of the Protestant community in the 
"perilous condition to which religious as well as civil 
liberty is reduced by the attempts of Popery and 
foreign enemies upon our free institutions ? Have 
Christian patriots reflected at all on the possible, 
nay, I will say probable loss of religious liberty ; 
or in idea attempted to follow out to their result and 
in their immeasurable extent the fearful consequen- 
ces of its loss ? Why is it then, that no more ener- 
getic efforts are made to save ourselves ? 

we hear this fearful tempest sing, 

Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm ; 

We see the wind sit sore upon our sails, 

And yet we strike not, but securely perish. 
****** 


116 DUTY OF THE PROTESTANT COMMUNITY. 

We see the very wreck that we must suffer; 

And unavoided is the danger now, 

For suffering so the causes of our wreck. 

Shafcspcare. 

Yes, the rocks are in fall view on which American 
liberty must inevitably be wrecked, unless all 
hands are aroused to immediate action. Our dan- 
gers are none the less, be assured, because they 
are not those against which the general cry of 
alarm is so loudly raised by the two great political 
parties of the day. In the heedless strife they are 
now waging, the most superlative epithets of alarm 
have been already exhausted by each, on fictitious, 
or comparatively trivial dangers to the common- 
wealth. The public ear is deafened by their noise ; 
its sense of hearing is grown callous with the reitera- 
ted cries of alarm on every slight occasion. “ Wolf! 
Wolf!” has been so often falsely cried, that now, 
when the wolf has in reality appeared, we cannot 
be made to realize it. “ If the trumpet give an un- 
certain sound, who shall prepare himself for the 
battle ?” We are busying ourselves in quenching the 
few falling sparks that threaten the deck of the 
ship without heeding the fire beneath, that is ap- 
proaching the magazine. In this reckless warfare 
of passion, and falsehood, and slander, and aided 
by the deafening din of party strife, neither party 
seem to have observed that a secret enemy, an 


FORMATION OF AN ANTI'FOPERY UNION CONSIDERED. H7 

artful foreign enemy, has stolen in upon us, joining 
his foreign accents to swell the uproar, that he may 
with less suspicion do his nefarious work.* Like 
incendiaries at a conflagration, they even cry fire ! 
loudest , and are most ostentatiously busy in seem- 
ing to protect that very property which they watch 
but to make theil* prey. 

What then can be done ? Shall Protestants or- 
ganize themselves into a political union after the 
manner of the Papists, and the various classes of 
industry and even of foreigners in the country? 
Shall they form an Anti-Popery Union, and take 
their places among this strange medley of conflict- 
ing interests? And why should they not? Vari- 
ous parties and classes do now combine and orga- 
nize for their own interest; and if any class of 
men are allowed thus to combine to promote their 
own peculiar interests at the expense of another 
class, that other class surely has at least an equal 
right to combine to protect itself against the excess 
of its antagonist. A denial of this right would cer- 
tainly come with an ill grace from those who are 
already formed into separate organizations, as a 
Working Men’s party, as a Trade’s Union party, 


* See Note O. 


118 


PRINCIPLES OF A UNION. 


as a Catholic party, as an Irish party, as a German 
party, yes, even as a French and an Italian party.* 

And now, on the supposition that such a political 
organization of Protestants were expedient, (for it 
resolves itself altogether into a question of expedien- 
cy) let us see whether any party or interest could 
show a stronger claim upon the support of the whole 
nation. Its manifesto might run thus : 

Popery is a Political system , despotic in its or- 
ganization, anti-democratic and anti-republican , and 
cannot therefore co-exist with American republican- 
ism. 

The ratio of increase of Popery is the exact 
ratio of decrease of civil liberty, 

* By classing these together at this moment, I do not in- 
tend to commit myself as expressing approval or disapproval 
of the right of each and all of these to organize, but merely to 
show that such organization does already exist among other 
classes in the community, and if even foreigners among us are 
allowed to exercise the right to organize into a separate inte- 
rest, yes, even as foreigners , can the right with any propri- 
ety be refused to American Christians? Having thus stated 
the case, I am now free to make the passing remark, that, ex- 
cluding from view the three classes first nampd, the right of 
foreigners to organize as foreigners for political purposes is at 
least very questionable j-fiut were their right unquestionably 
legal through th^mi)dn.t^s.cfour laW's, yet the practice is dan- 
gerQu^-indectffous'ari'd a palpable abuse of political liberality. 
The Irish naturalized citizens who should know no other name 
than Americans, for years have claimed together as Irish, and 
every means has been used and is still useu, especially by Ca- 
tho'ics, t& preserve them distinct from the American family. 
Recently a portion of the Germans have organized to keep 
up their distinct nationality, and the French and Italians 
have just followed the example. [Nov. 1834] To what will 
all this lead? 


ITS MANIFESTO. 


119 


The dominance of Popery in the United States 
is the certain destruction of our free institutions . 

Popery, by its organization, is wholly under the 
control of a Foreign despotic Sovereign. 

Austria, one of the Holy Alliance of Sovereigns 
leagued against the liberties of the world, has the 

SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE OPERATIONS OF POPERY IN 
THIS COUNTRY. 

The agents of Austria in the United States are 
Jesuits and priests in the pay of that foreign power, 
in active correspondence with their employers 
abroad, not bound by ties of any kind to our govern, 
ment or country, but, on the contrary, impelled by 
the strongest motives of ambition , to serve the inte- 
rests of a despotic foreign government ; which am- 
bition has already, in one or more instances, been 
gratified, by promotion of these agents to higher 
office and wealth in Europe. 

Popery is a Union of Church and State, nor 
can Popery exist in this country in that plenitude 
of power which it claims as a divine right, and 
which, in the very nature of the system, it must 
continually strive to obtain, uiitil such a union is 
consummated . Popery on this ground, therefore, is 
destructive to our religious as well as civil liberty. 

Popery is more dangerous and more formidable 
than any power in the United States* on the ground 


120 such A union discarded as degrading. 

that, through its despotic organization , it can concen- 
trate its efforts for any purpose, with complete effect, 
and that organization being wholly under foreign 
control, it can have no real sympathy with any 
thing American. The funds and intellect , and in- 
triguing experience of all Papal and Despotic Eu- 
rope , by means of agents at this moment organized 
throughout our land, can, at any time, be brought 
in aid of the enterprises of foreign powers in this 
country. 

These are the grounds upon which an appeal 
for support might be made to the patriotism, the 
love of liberty, the hatred of tyranny, temporal and 
spiritual, which belong in common to the whole 
Protestant American family. 

But is this the plan of opposition to Popery that 
should be proposed, the plan which ought to be 
adopted by the Protestant community? No; dis- 
tinctly and decidedly no ; plausible as it may ap- 
pear, and perfectly in accordance as it is with the 
practice of politicians, the Christian community 
ought not, cannot adopt such an organization. 
There must not be a Christian party. What l 
shall Christianity throw aside the keen moral and 
intellectual arms with which alone it has gained and 
secured every substantial victory since the com- 
mencement of its glorious career ; shall it exchange 


CHRISTIANS MUST NOT DEGRADE THEMSELVES. J21 

those arms of heavenly temper, “ mighty in pulling 
down strong holds,” for the paltry, earthly (I might 
even say infernal) weapons of party strife? Can 
Christianity stoop so low ? Can it bring itself down 
from contemplating its great work of revolutionizing 
the world by bringing moral truth to bear on the 
conscience and the heart, and narrow its vision to 
the contracted sphere of party politics? Can it 
enter, without defilement, into the polluted and pol* 
luting arena of political contest ? Can it consent to 
be bargained for by political hucksters, or have 
the price of its favors hawked in the market by 
political brokers ?* Can it consent to compete 
with Popery in the use of those instruments of 
intrigue, and trick, and gambling management, in 
which Popery is perfectly skilled from the hoard- 
ed experience of ages ? Can Christians present 
themselves before the country and the world, in 
this enlightened age and country, as a mere politi- 
cal party ? No, no ; God forbid, that we should 
forget the holy character of our cause ; let us not 
be caught in that snare of the enemy. The danger- 
cry of Church and State may safely be left to the 
people, to trumpet aloud through the land, when the 
blind infatuation, which now closes their eyes, shall 
have been removed, and they shall be able to see, 
♦ See note P. 

11 


122 


THEY MUST EXERCISE MORAL ENERGY. 


what many already see, the secretpolitical manoeu^ 
verings* of a sect whose very existence depends 
upon a Union of Church and State. No; let 
American Christianity proclaim anew to all the 
world that it can never be wooed to any such unho- 
ly alliance. It will keep its garments unspotted 
from the crimes of the State. It will take none of 
the responsibilities of the political errors of the age; 
nor father any of the evils which the unprincipled 
politicians of the day may bring upon the country 
and the world as the effect of their political bargain- 
ings. 

Now is the time for this Christian Republic to 
show her moral energy. Europe is an anxious 
spectator of our contests, and is watching the suc- 
cess of this new trial of the strength of our boasted 
institutions. Oh ! what a lesson, what an impressive 
lesson might free America now read to Europe ! 
what an example of the power of moral over physi. 
cal government, can she give to the world if she 
will but rouse herself in her moral might, to the 
grand effort which the occasion demands? How 
would the petty jealousies of the different Protestant 
sects be swallowed up in the magnitude of the one 
great enterprise? How would every sect rather 
cheer the others on in their united march against a 


♦ See note R. 


THEY MUST VIE WITH EACH OTHER. 


123 


common foe, and make a common rejoicing of the 
success of any and every corps, as of a victorious 
regiment in the same great army ? 

Will American Christians prepare themselves 
for this enterprise ? Will each sect awake to the 
feeling of its being a corps of the great Christian 
army, marching under the command of no earthly 
leader, fighting with no earthly weapons, and against 
no earthly foe. Will they wake to the perception 
of the great truth, that while their great Captain al- 
lows each to act separately and independently with- 
in certain limits, it is he that commands in chief and 
now orders all his soldiers, under whatever earthly 
banner enrolled, in united phalanx to go forward , 
forward in his single service. Which corps will 
first marshall itself for action ? Which will be first 
in the field ? Which will press forward with most 
zeal for the honor of the advance, for the post of 
danger ? Which in the battle will be most in earn- 
est to carry forward the standards of truth and plant 
them upon the battlements of papal darkness ? Will 
any shrink back for fear ? Will any be deterred 
from unholy jealousy of its neighbor? Will any 
indulge in unchristian, ignoble suspicion of its breth- 
ren ? What cause have any for fear, or jealousy, 
or suspicion ? This enterprise asks no sacrifice of 
sectarian principle ; it demands no surrender of con- 


124 AND USE THEItt POWERFUL WEAPONS 

scientious predilection of each to its own modes and 
forms ; but it does ask the sacrifice of petty preju- 
dice ; it does demand the surrender of those misera- 
ble jealousies and envyings which more or less be- 
long to some of every sect, when they learn the 
greater success of another, as if the victory of one 
were not the victory of all. And what are the 
weapons of this warfare? The Bible, the Tract, 
the Infant school, the Sunday school, the common 
school for all classes, the academy for all classes, 
the college and university for all classes, a free 
press for the discussion of all questions. These, all 
these, are weapons of Protestantism, weapons un- 
known to Popery ! Yes, all unknown to genuine 
Popery ! Let no one be deceived by the Popish 
apings of Protestant institutions. The Popish semi- 
nary has little in common with the Protestant semi- 
nary but the name. It is but the sheep’s skin that 
covers the wolfs back ; the teeth and the claws are 
not even well concealed beneath. With the weapons 
we have named, and with our Education societies, 
Theological seminaries, and Missionary societies, 
we need no new organization, no Anti-Popery union. 
But we must use our arms, and not rest satisfied with 
the possession of them. They must be furbished 
anew, and we must prepare ourselves for a vigorous 
warfare. We must be stirring, if w r e mean indeed 


WITHOUT THE LEAST DELAV. 


125 


to be victorious. Not a moment is to be lost. The 
enemy knows well the importance of the present 
instant. Hear what he says, “ We must make 
haste , the moments are precious . — If the Protes- 
tant SECTS ARE BEFOREHAND WITH US, IT WILL BE 
DIFFICULT TO DESTROY THEIR INFLUENCE. ** Ought 
not this acknowledgment of the enemy to quicken 
and encourage to instant effort. And again writes 
a Catholic Missionary, “ zeal for error is always 
hot, particularly among the Methodists, whom nothing 
can turn from their track, and who heap absurdity 
upon absurdity. I should despair , if I should see 
this sect building a church in my neighborhood 
Will not our Methodist brethren take this hint ? 


. 
























♦ 


CHAPTER XII. 


The political duty of American citizens at this crisis. 

In my last number I deemed it a duty to warn 
the Christian community against the temptation to 
which they were exposed, in guarding against the po- 
litical dangers arising from Popery, of leaving their 
proper sphere of action, and degrading themselves 
to a common political interest. This is a snare into 
which they might easily fall, and into which, if Po- 
pery could invite or force them, it might keep a ju- 
bilee, for its triumph would be sure. The propen- 
sity to resist by unlawful means the encroachments 
of an enemy, because that enemy uses such means 
against us, belongs to human nature. We are very 
apt to think, in the irritation of being attacked, that 
we may lawfully hurl back the darts of a foe, what- 
ever may be their character ; that we may ** fight 
the Devil with fire,” instead of the milder, yet more 
effective weapon of “ the Lord rebuke thee.” The 
same spirit of Christianity which forbids us to re- 
turn railing for railing, and persecution for persecu- 


128 


POLITICAL DUTY OP AMERICANS. 


tion, forbids the use of unlawful or even of doubtful 
means of defence, merely because an enemy uses 
them to attack us. If Popery, (as is unblushingly the 
case,) organizes itself at our elections, if it interferes 
politically and sells itself to this or that political de- 
magogue or party, it should be remembered, that 
this is notoriously the true character of Popery. It 
is its nature. It cannot act otherwise. Intrigue is 
its appropriate business. But all this is foreign to 
Christianity. Christianity must not enter the politi- 
cal arena with Popery, nor be mailed in Popish ar- 
mor. The weapons and stratagems of Popery suit 
not with the simplicity and frankness of Christiani- 
ty. Like David with the armor of Saul, it would 
sink beneath the ill fitting covering, before the Phi- 
listine. Yes ! Popery will be an overmatch for any 
Christian who fights behind any other shield than 
that of Faith, or uses any other sword than the sword 
of the spirit of Truth. 

But whilst deprecating a union of religious sects 
to act politically against Popery, I must not be mis- 
understood as recommending no political opposition 
to Popery by the American community. I have 
endeavored to rouse Protestants to a renewed and 
more vigorous use of their religious weapons in their 
moral war with Popery, but I am not unmindful of 
another duty, the political duty, which the double 


TO 0PP09E POPERY POLITICALLY. 


129 


character of Popery makes it necessary to urge 
upon Amercan citizens, with equal force, — the im- 
perious duty of defending the distinctive principles 
of our civil government. It must be sufficiently 
manifest to every republican citizen that the civil po- 
lity of Popery is in direct opposition to all which he 
deems sacred in government. He must perceive 
that Popery cannot from its very nature tolerate any 
of those civil rights which are the peculiar boast of 
Americans. Should Popery increase but for a little 
time longer in this country with the alarming rapid- 
ity with which, as authentic statistics testify, it is ad- 
vancing at the present time, (and it must not be for- 
gotten that despotism in Europe, in its desperate 
.struggles for existence, is lending its powerful aid to 
the enterprise,) we may even in this generation learn 
by sad experience what common sagacity and ordi- 
nary research might now teach, in time to arrest 
the evil, that Popery cannot tolerate our form of 
government in any of its essential principles. 

Popery does not acknowledge the right of the 
people to govern ; but claims for itself the supreme 
right to govern all people and all rulers by divine 
right. 

It does not tolerate the Liberty of the Press ; it 
takes .advantage indeed of our liberty of the press 


130 


IF POLITICALLY OPPOSED, 


to use its own press against our liberty •; but it pro- 
claims in the thunders of the Vatican, and with a 
voice which it pronounces infallible and unchangea- 
ble, that it is a liberty “ never sufficiently to be exe- 
crated and detested” 

It does not tolerate liberty of conscience nor lib- 
erty of opinion. The one is denounced by the 
Sovereign Pontiff as “ a most pestilential error,” and 
the other, “ a pest of all others most to be dreaded in 
a state” 

It is not responsible to the people in its financial 
matters. It taxes at will, and is accountable to none 
but itself 

Now these are political tenets held by Papists 
in close union with their religious belief, yet these 
are not religious but civil tenets ; they belong to 
despotic government. Conscience cannot be plead- 
ed against our dealing politically with them. They 
are separable from religious belief; and if Papists 
will separate them, and repudiate these noxious 
principles, and teach and act accordingly, the polit- 
ical duty of exposing and opposing Papists, on the 
ground of the enmity of their political tenets to our 
republican government, will cease. But can they 
do it? If they can, it behoves them to do it with- 
out delay. If they cannot, or will not, let them not 


PAPISTS CANNOT COMPLAIN OP RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION. 131 

complain of religious persecution, or of religious in- 
tolerance, if this republican people, when it shall 
wake to a sense of the danger that threatens its 
blood-bought institutions* shall rally to their defence 
with some show of indignation. Let them not 
whinea bout religious oppression, if the democracy 
turns its searching eye upon this secret treason to 
the state, and shall in future scrutinize with some- 
thing of* suspicion, the professions of those foreign 
friends , who are so ready to rush to a fraternal em- 
brace. Let them not raise the cry of religious 
proscription, if American republicans shall stamp 
an indelible brand upon the liveried slaves of a for- 
eign despot, the servile adorers of their “ good Em- 
peror,” the Austrian conspirators, who now shelter- 
ed behind the shield of our religious liberty, dream 
of security, while sapping the foundations of our 
civil government. Let no foreign Holy Alliance 
presume, or congratulate itself, upon the hitherto 
unsuspicious and generous toleration of its secret 
agents in this country. America may* for a time, 
sleep soundly, as innocence is wont to sleep, unsus- 
picious of hostile attack ; but if any foreign power, 
jealous of the increasing strength of the embryo 
giant, sends its serpents to lurk within his cradle, 
let such presumption be assured that the waking 


132 


THE INFANT HERCULES AWAKE. 


energies of the infant are not to be despised, that 
once having grasped his foes, he will neither be 
tempted from his hold by admiration of their painted 
and gilded covering, nor by fear of the fatal em- 
brace of their treacherous folds. 


APPENDIX. 


Note A. — Page 14. 

The War of Opinions . 

Every account from Europe attests the correct- 
ness of the views here taken more than a year since, 
of the political state of the civilized world. This 
war of opinions, or of categories , asLafayette termed 
it, is in truth commenced, and Americans, if they 
will but use common observation, cannot but feel 
that a neglect to notice, and provide against the 
consequences of that settled, systematic hostility 
to free institutions so strongly manifested by foreign 
powers, and which is daily assuming a more serious 
aspect, will inevitably result in mischief to the 
country, will surely be attended with anarchy if 
they wake not to the apprehension of the reality of 
this danger. Americans, you indeed sleep upon 
a mine. This is scarcely a figure of speech ; you 
have excitable materials in the bosom of your soci- 
ety, which, skilfully put in action by artful dema- 
gogues, will subvert your present social system ; 

12 


134 


APPENDIX. 


you have a foreign interest too, daily, hourly, in- 
creasing, ready to take advantage of every excite- 
ment, and which will shortly be beyond your con- 
trol, or will be subdued only by blood. You have 
agents among you, men in the pay of those very 
foreign powers, whose every measure of foreign 
and domestic policy has now for its end and aim 
the destruction of liberty every where. To increase 
your peril, you have a press that will not apprise 
you of the dangers that threaten you ; we can reach 
you with our warnings only through the religious 
journals ; the daily press is blind, or asleep, or bri- 
bed, or afraid ; at any rate, it is silent on this sub- 
ject, and thus is throwing the weight of its influence 
on the side of your enemies. Foreign spies have 
clothed themselves in a religious dress, and so 
awe-struck are our journalists at its sacred texture, 
or so unable or unwilling to discern the difference 
between the man and his mask, that they start away 
in fear, lest they should be called bigoted or intole- 
rant, or persecuting, if they should venture to lift up 
the consecrated cloak that hides a foreign foe. 
Americans, if you depend on your daily press, you 
rely on a broken reed ; it fails you in your need. 
It dare not, no, it dare not attack Popery. It dare 
not drag into the light ihe political enemies of your 
liberty, because they come in the name of religion. 
All despotic Europe is awake and active in plotting 
your downfall, and yet they let you sleep, and you 
choose not to be awaked ; “ a little more sleep, a 
little more slumber, a little more folding of the 


APPENDIX. 


135 


hands to sleep.” And now like a man whose house 
is on fire, dreaming of comfort and .security, you 
will perhaps repel with passion and reproach the 
friendly hand that would wake you in season to 
escape with your life. 

Do you doubt whether Europe is in hostile 
array against liberty ? Read of the movements 
and revolutions of foreign cabinets, as one or the 
other principle temporarily predominates. Read 
the views of the statesmen of Europe. A distin- 
guished member of the Spanish Cortes Don Teles- 
foro de Trueba, in a speech delivered before that 
body a few months since, says, “ The present war is 
not a war of succession but of principle — liberty 
and despotism are at issue. England, France, Bel- 
gium, Spain and Portugal, have ranged themselves 
under the banner of the former, but it is not neces- 
sary for me to name those powers who follow the 
standard of the latter.” — Of Don Carlos and his 
government he says, “ Ignorance, hypocrisy, and 
fanaticism, are his only counsellors, whispering to 
him new modes of oppressing his people. Every 
thing around is stamped with the marks of baseness 
and falsehood, while in this infernal region deso- 
lation and death reign triumphant. A sanguinary 
priesthood is sacrificing human victims to the God 
of peace and love, — men who wish to bring back 
the dark ages, the age of tyranny, and ignorance, 
and death.” 

The foreign correspondent of the Evening Post, 
in a letter from Florence, Italy, published in that 


136 


APPENDIX. 


journal, Dec. 27, 1834, has the following information* 
directly from Tuscany. 

“ Hitherto” (in the adminstration of the govern- 
ment) “ a disposition has been shown to let off 
political offenders as lightly as possible — but lately, 
however, something of the same jealousy of repub- 
licanism has shown itself , which has been manifest- 
ed by the other absolute governments of Europe . 
A quarterly journal was suppressed a few months 
since, on account of something which gave offence 
to Austria. This, and several other acts of the 
Grand Duke, have greatly diminished his personal 
popularity. The rulers of Italy appear to have 
come to an understanding , that it is time to make 
an example of some of the disaffected.” 

Now this Austria is the same busy, meddling 
government that is operating in this country ; we 
scarcely read the name of Austria in a foreign jour- 
nal, or in letters from abroad, but in connection 
with some plan for extinguishing liberty, and yet 
we harbor her emissaries, promote their secret 
designs, contribute our money to swell their coffers, 
build for them their seminaries and convents, entrust 
our children to their instruction, court their favor, 
shield them from all attack, yes, even put ourselves 
under their protection : all, all this we do, and our 
native blood flows evenly in our veins. Spirit of ’76 
where dost thou sleep ? 


APPENDIX. 


137 


Note B. — Page 34. 

Opposite tendencies of Popery and Protestantism. 

On the very threshold of the examination upon 
which I have here entered, and while searching 
among the records of the two sects for the politi- 
cal tendencies of the principles of Popery and 
Protestantism, I was struck with the marked differ, 
ence in extent which the two fields of inquiry le- 
gitimately offered for examination. The prime dog- 
ma of the Catholics, that all which their church 
teaches is infallible, unchangeable ; that what she 
has onde taught as truth must now and forever be 
truth, lays open to our examination a wide field. 
All and each of the precepts, laws, and acts of 
Popery, from the earliest ages to the present day, 
may be legitimately quoted to show the political 
character of that sect. Innovation, repeal, reform, 
or progress can find no admittance into the Papal 
system, without destroying the fundamental princi- 
ple on which the whole system rests. “ The whole 
of our faith,” says Cardinal Pallavicini, an infallible 
authority , “rests upon one indivisible article, name- 
ly the infallible authority of the church. The mo- 
ment , therefore ) we give up any part whatever , the 
whole falls i for what admits not of being divided, 
must evidently stand entire , or fall entire.” 

Protestantism, on the contrary, is founded on 
the Bible ; the Bible is the rallying point of all Pro- 
testant religious sects. They all believe that God 
is its author. The religious faith of each is bound 
12 * 


138 


APPENDIX. 


to this one volume. But as the Bible prescribes no 
form of faith, or doctrine, or of church government, 
in which all, in the exercise of the natural and re- 
vealed right of private judgment, can agree, each 
sect adopts that form most in accordance with what 
it believes to be the spirit of the doctrines which 
the Bible teaches. Hence there is di\ersity of 
views, according to the diversities of human con- 
stitution, according to the varying degrees of intel- 
lectual cultivation, or the peculiar wants and con- 
dition incident to the infinite variety of circumstan- 
ces in which human society exists. Upon this free- 
dom to choose according to the dictates of reason' 
and conscience, granted to man by his Maker, 
denied by Roman Catholics aud claimed by Pro- 
testants, is built the fabric of religious liberty. Dif- 
ference of opinion being allowed, controversy of 
course ensues, and converts are to be made not by 
force of arms, but by force of truth supported by 
appeals to reason and conscience. Zealous accord- 
ing to the strength of his belief in the dogmas of 
his sect, the Protestant calls to his aid all the treas- 
ures of science. He believes that the divine Author 
of truth in the Bible is also the author of truth in 
Nature. He know's, that as truth is one, He that 
created all that forms the vast field of scientific 
research cannot contradict truth in Scripture by 
truth in nature ; the Protestant is therefore the con- 
sistent encourager of all learning, of all investiga- 
tion. Every discovery in science, he feels, brings 
to religious truth fresh treasures. Free inquiry, 


APPENDIX. 


139 


and discussion, all intellectual activity legitimately 
belong to Protestantism. It js by thus opening 
wide the doors of knowledge, and letting in the 
light of natural science upon what it believes to be 
the revealed truth of the Bible, that Protestantism 
has been able gradually to bring out the principle 
of religious liberty , and in its train the invaluable 
blessing of civil liberty . — At the commencement of 
the Reformation, however, we are not to look for 
a full development of the free principles of Pro- 
testantism. We must expect to find many truths, 
(which to us who live in the noon of freedom, are 
as clear as the sun,) then obscured or entirely in- 
visible in the popish darkness of the times. The 
slavish prohibitions, the deep-rooted heathen rites, 
and the arbitrary dogmas of Popery were then en- 
forced by power, by ignorance, and corruption, so 
that the struggle of free with despotic principles 
was attended, through many generations, with con- 
stant vicissitude. No maxim or usage of Popish 
intolerance, that for a long time clung or still clings 
to any of the Protestant systems of Europe, can be 
quoted against American Protestantism ; conse- 
quently I am under no necessity of defending any 
despotic or intolerant practice, which may be charg- 
ed or proved upon foreign, or ancient Protestant- 
ism, while every act or practice, past or present of 
Popish enactment is, (Papists themselves being 
judges,) available to demonstrate the immutable 
character of Popery. 


140 


APPENDIX. 


Note C. — Page 44. 

The foreign Emissaries of Popery rewarded in their 
own country. 

This is a matter deserving of serious attention. 
Where now is Bishop Cheverus, who passed about 
fourteen years in Boston ? He was a foreigner, 
with no ties to this country, paid for his services 
by a foreign government, he had a duty to his for- 
eign masters to perform. What that duty was, 
may now easily be conjectured. Boston, as the 
capital of New-England, was considered at the time 
he arrived, the strong hold of Protestant, of Anti- 
Popish principles. Popery was there, and through- 
out New-England, held in the greatest abhorrence, 
for to Popery may be traced, though remotely, yet 
clearly, the persecutions which drove the Pilgrim- 
fathers to this country. The history of those fath- 
ers, for ages previous, is but the history of hard 
fought battles, to wrest from Popish usurpation 
those invaluable rights, civil and religious, which 
they fled to this wilderness securely to enjoy. Ere po- 
pery then could expect to gain foothold among the de- 
scendants of the persecuted Puritans, their almost in- 
nate abhorrence to popery must be overcome. What 
plan could be better devised to accomplish the end, 
than to send the mild, conciliating, gentle Bishop 
to demonstrate by his example and his teaching, that 
Popery was not that monster their fathers had taught 
them to believe it to be, or at least that now the ty- 
rant had grown mild and tolerant. If this were the 


APPENDIX. 


141 


design, no plan could have been more successful. 
Who that has visited Boston, does not know the 
epithets with which Bishop Cheverus’ name is 
coupled. The good bishop, the liberal bishop, the 
excellent , pious, tolerant, mild bishop. Now all 
this might have been and perhaps is true of the bish- 
op. The instrument was well chosen, his duty was 
well accomplished, and he receives the reward of a 
faithful servant from his foreign masters, in atrans- 
lation to the wealthy archbishopric of Bordeaux. 

Again, where is Bishop Dubourg, of New-Orleans? 
He has resided in this heathen land his stated time, 
and having accomplished the duty prescribed to him is 
translated to the Bishopric of Montauban, in France. 

And again, where is Bishop Kelly, of Richmond, 
Va.? He also sojourns with us until his duties to 
foreign masters are performed, and then is reward- 
ed by promotion at home to the Bishopric of Wa- 
terford and Lismore. 

And where, soon will be that busy, pompous 
Jesuit, who has been so often announced as 
passing and repassing between Rome, Vienna, 
and the United States, Bishop England ? If re- 
port speaks truth, he is soon to be rewarded for 
his services in the cause of his foreign masters with 
a Cardinal's hat. The following from the Dublin 
Freeman’s Journal, preceded by a nauseous mass 
of fulsome compliment, gives substance to the re- 
port: — “After escorting these ladies (some nuns) 
to Charleston, Dr. England proceeds without delay 
as Legate from the Pope to Ilayti, over the eccle- 


142 


APPENDIX. 


siastical affairs of which republic he carries with, 
him from the Holy See the most full and unlimited 
powers ; from which we confidently trust ere longp 
he will again return to Europe, to receive as some 
reward for all his labors and services, a Cardinal’s 
hat ; for instead of receiving dignity from , should 
such an appointment take place, Dr. England will 
confer dignity upon the sacred purple.” 

Now in view of these instances of services in 
this country, rewarded by appointments in Europe, 
the question naturally occurs : What interest have 
these servants of a foreign despotism in the free 
institutions of this country ? What sympathies with 
American liberty can these foreigners have, educa- 
ted, as they have been in their own country, in the 
principles of despotic institutions, living but tem- 
porarily in this country, (whose entire political sys- 
tem is diametrically opposed to their whole educa- 
tion,) and looking forward, after their task is per- 
formed, to a recal to comfortable benefices and 
high places of profit and honor at home, to rewards 
devised by Austria and the Pope, and meted out to 
their faithful advocates according to the zeal and 
devotion manifested to their interests? What would 
be said of the Episcopalian, or Presbyterian, or 
Methodist, or Baptist clergy, were they announ- 
ced as foreigners sent from England, who after a 
short sojourn of active service in this country, 
were known to be recalled and promoted in their 
own country, to be Bishops, and dignified officers 
under the British government ? 


APPENDIX. 


143 


Note D. — Page 5 3. 
Sanguinary spirit still existing in Modern Popery. 

If any suppose that Popery has changed its in- 
tolerant character in modern times, we refer them 
to the following specimen of its spirit. It is Popery 
of the present day ; Popery of 1833. 

In the recent journals of Modena, in Italy, are 
articles signed by the duke of Canosa, the language 
of which knows no bounds. He justifies the St. 
Bartholomew’s Massacre. He says, “ when a dis- 
ease has made such progress, that it cannot be 
cured by magnesia and calomel, to save life, re- 
sort must be had to arsenic. If Charles IX. had 
recoiled from the massacre of the Huguenots, he 
would certainly have perished, a few weeks after, 
upon the scaffold, as happened to the indulgent 
and compassionate Louis XVI., because he took an 
opposite course. He who in such a case has not 
the courage of a lion, and does not resolve on rig- 
orous measures, is lost. The pusillanimous alone 
are ignorant of this truth.” Such shocking senti- 
ments, be it remembered, are published in a coun- 
try, where there is a censorship of the press : and 
they are therefore the language of the government. 

The duke reasons like a true legitimate. The 
happiness and lives of the people to any amount, 
are mere chaff compared with the happiness and 
life of that sainted bauble called a king. His rea- 
soning amounts to this: “ better that thousands of 
the common people should perish by the bloodiest 


144 


APPENDIX. 


butchery, than that the single life of one human 
being endowed with divine right to reign y should 
like Louis XVI. perish on the scaffold.” It is not 
necessary to defend the shedding of royal blood, but 
there is a trick of kingcraft which ought to be ex- 
posed, because its influence is not unfelt in this 
country. The divine right to reign is first assumed, 
then the human being thus invested with power 
partakes of divinity , he becomes sacred , and all 
the names and paraphernalia of idolatrous worship 
surround him. He becomes a God, every word he 
utters, every step he takes, every action, however 
unimportant in any other human being, is invested 
in this earthly divinity with a sacred character. 
Does the god-king ride out, the whole country must 
know the important event; is he married, the whole 
nation keeps jubilee ; is he dead, the world is clad 
in mourning. The misfortunes of his offspring are 
magnified and consecrated by all the arts of the 
imagination, by all the embellishments of romance.. 
Is an illustration wanted ? Take a recent case. 
Look at the history of the Duchess de Berri, an 
infamous woman, notoriously profligate, of a cha- 
racter that in common life would condemn her to 
the neglect of the world, and cast her out of all 
society. But she is a princess, she has a spark of 
royal divinity that shines upon her brazen front, 
and the duped multitude bow in adoration before 
her. Her sufferings, her wanderings, her dress in 
the minutest particulars, her words, her looks, are 
the subject of sympathetic appeals to the coinpas- 


APPENDIX. 


145 


sion of the world ; ladies shed tears over the dis- 
tresses of the unfortunate princess. Alas! alas! that 
royal blood should suffer ! And are we not influ- 
enced by this mawkish, morbid sympathy for suffer- 
ing despots ? Where are our sympathies, when 
the interested statements of a government-controlled 
foreign press, inform us of the struggles of the people 
against age-consecrated oppression. Are they with 
the people ? Do we ever suspect the truth of the 
glowing details of the doings of the scandalous mob, 
the high-wrought accounts of outrage and rebellion 
of a wicked rabble against lawful authority , which 
circulate through our land, the production abroad of 
pensioned writers, of a licensed press, and those too 
without remark or explanation from our press? What 
should be the feelings of a true American ? Where 
should be his sympathies, who has been nurtured 
in the air of liberty, who has learned from his fath- 
er’s lips the black catalogue of despotic wrongs, 
which his ancestors suffered, and which were defen- 
ded by all the tricks and glosses, and arts of oppres- 
sion ? If any human being should feel quick sympa- 
thy with the struggles of the people, should examine 
with the greatest care the charges preferred against 
them, and exercise a willing charity for their appa- 
rent or real excesses, and quick mistrust of all the 
doings, representations and fair speeches of despot- 
ism, it is an American. 


13 


146 


APPENDIX. 


Note E. — Page 5 4. 

Popery is organized throughout the World. 

This organization is asserted in the late procla- 
mation of the Pope to the Portuguese. In the cata- 
logue of his complaints he says : “ Nevertheless, 
that which principally afflicts us is, that those acts 
and measures have evidently for their aim to break 
every bond of union, with that venerable chair of 
the blessed Peter” (his own throne) “ which Jesus 
Christ has made the centre of unity ; and thus the 
society of communion being once broken, to wound 
thechurchby the most pernicious schism. In fact, 
how can there be unity in the body, when the mem- 
bers are not united to the head, and do not obey 

it r 


Note F. — Page 57. 

Immigration and our Naturalization Lata. 

The subject of immigration is one of those 
which demands the immediate attention of the na- 
tion, it is a question which concerns all parties ; and 
if the writer is not mistaken in his reading of the 
signs of the times, the country is waking to a sense 
of the alarming evil produced by our naturaliza- 
tion laws. Let us war among ourselves in party 
warfare, with every lawful weapon that we can con- 
vert to our purpose. It is our birthright to have 
our own opinion, and earnestly to contend for it, 
but let us court no foreign friends. Every A me- 


APPENDIX. 


147 


rican should feel his national blood mount at the 
very thought of foreign interference. While we 
welcome the intelligent and persecuted of all 
nations and give them an asylum and a share in 
our privileges, let us beware lest we admit to dan- 
gerous fellowship those who cannot and will not use 
our hospitality aright. That such may come, and 
do come, there is no reason to doubt. Consider 
the following testimony of an emigrant, given be- 
fore a justice in Albany. He says that “in June 
last, the parish officers paid the passages of himself 
and about forty others of the same parish , from 
Chatham to the city of Boston, in America, on 
board the ship Royalist, Capt. Parker, and that they 
landed in Boston in the month of July last — that 
the parish officers gave him thirty shillings sterling, 
in money, in addition to paying his passage, — that 
he is now entirely destitute of the means of living, 
and is unable to labor, and prays for relief.” 

Now here are forty paupers cast upon our 
shores from one parish in England, and in five, 
years they become citizens , entitled to vote ! ! Is 
there an American of any party, who can believe 
that there is no danger in admitting to equal privi- 
leges with himself such a class of foreigners. A 
remedy to this crying evil admits of not a moment’s 
delay. At this moment the ocean swarms with 
ships crowded with this wretched population, bear- 
ing them from misery abroad to misery here. 

The expense incurred in this city (New York) 
for the support of foreign paupers, it is well known 


148 


appendix. 


is enormous. In Philadelphia more than three 
fourths of the inmates of their Almshouse are for- 
eigners. Whole families have been known to come 
from on board ship, and go directly to the Alms- 
house. In the Boston Dispensary there were the 
last year, (1834) from two districts only, 477 'pa- 
tients ; of these 441 were foreigners ! ! Leaving but 
36 of our own population to be provided for. In 
the Boston Almshouse, the following returns show 
the increase of foreign paupers in five years. 

The year ending Sept 30, 1829, Americans 395 
“ “ “ “ Foreigners 284 

The year ending Sept. 30, 1834, Americans 340 
“ “ “ “ Foreigners 613 

Thus we see that native pauperism has decreas- 
ed in five years, and foreign pauperism more than 
doubled. 

In Cambridge, (Mass.) more than four-fifths 
of the paupers are foreigners. 

The first and immediate step that should be ta- 
ken, is to press upon Congress and upon the nation, 
instant attention to the naturalization laws. We 
must first stop this leak in the ship, through which 
the muddy waters from without threaten to sink 
us. If we mean to keep our country, this life-boat 
of the world, from foundering with all the crew, we 
must take on board no more from the European 
wreck until we have safely landed and sheltered 
its present freight. But would you have us forfeit 
the character of the country as the asylum of the 
world? No: but it is a mistaken philanthropy in- 


appendix. 


149 


deed that would attempt to save one at the expense 
of the lives of thousands ; that would receive into 
our families those dying of the plague. Our natu- 
ralization laws were never intended to convert this 
land into the almshouse of Europe, to cover the 
alarming importation of every thing in the shape ot 
man that European tyranny thinks fit to send 
adrift from its shores, nor so to operate as to com- 
pel us to surrender back all the blessings of that 
freedom for which our fathers paid so dear a 
price into the keeping of its foreign enemies. No, 
we must have the law so amended that no for- 
eigner WHO MAY COME INTO THE COUNTRY, AFTER 
THE PASSAGE OF THE NEW LAW, SHALL EVER BE AL- 
LOWED TO EXERCISE THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE. 

This alone meets the evil in its fullest extent. 

Who can complain of injustice in the enactment 
of such a law ? Not the native American , he is 
not touched by it. Certainly not the foreigner 
now in the country , whether naturalized or not. It 
cannot operate against him. It would take away 
no right from a single individual in any country. 
This law would withhold a favor, not a right from 
foreigners, and from those foreigners only who may 
hereafter come into the country. If foreigners 
abroad choose to take offence at the law, we are 
not under obligations to consult their wishes, they 
need not come here. This favor , it should be under- 
stood, has repeatedly been abused, and it is necessa- 
ry for the safety of our institutions in future to with- 
hold it. The pressing dangers to the country from 
13 * 


150 


APPENDIX. 


Popery, which I think I have shown not to be 
fictitious; other visible indications of foreign influ- 
ence in the political horizon ; the bold organiza- 
tion of foreigners as foreigners in our elections — 
these all demand the instant attention of Ameri- 
cans, if they mean not to be robbed by foreign in- 
trigue of their liberty and their very name. 


Note G. — Page 63. 

One College at the West under Austrian influence. 

The following fact illustrates the dangerous, 
successful intriguing spirit of the Jesuits, and the 
culpable negligence of one of our state legislatures 
(that of Kentucky) who has thus suffered it- 
self to be the dupe of Popish artifice. “ St. 
Joseph’s College, at Bardstown, Kentucky, was 
incorporated by the State Legislature in 1824. 
The Bishop of Bardstown is Moderator, and five 
Priests are Trustees. And there is this provision 
in the charter : “ The said trustees shall hold their 
station in said college one year only, at which time 
the said moderator shall have the power of electing 
others, or the same, if he should think proper, and 
increase the number to twelve, and this power may 
be exercised by him every year thereafter, or his 
successor or successors to the Bishopric ; and in 
case of the removal, resignation or death of either 
of the said trustees, his place may be supplied by 
an appointment that may be made by the said 


APPENDIX. 


151 


Bishop, or his successor or successors, who may also 
become moderators in the institution, and act and 
do as the said B. J. Flaget is empowered by this 
act to do.” 

The Bishop of Bardstown, in a letter to a friend 
in Europe, dated February, 1825, says : — “Our 
Legislature has just incorporated the college. The 
Bishops of Bardstown are continued perpetually its 
moderators or rectors. I might have dictated con- 
ditions , which I could not have made more advan- 
tageous or honorable ; and what is still more flat- 
tering is, that these privileges were granted almost 
without any discussion, and with unanimity in 
both houses.” 

Now the Pope it is well known appoints all 
Bishops. Here then is one college in the country 
already placed inperpetuo under the exclusive con- 
trol of the Pope, and consequently for an indefinite 
period under that of Austria ! ! 


Note H. — Page 66. 

Glory-giving Titles. 

One of the plainest doctrines of American Re- 
publicanism, which is essentially democratic, is, 
that mere glory -giving titles, or titles of servility, are 
entirely opposed to its whole spirit. They are con- 
sidered as one of those artificial means of kingcraft 
by which it fosters that aristocratic, unholy pride 
in the human heart, which loves to domineer over 


152 


APPENDIX. 


its fellow-man, which loves artificial distinction of 
ranks, a privileged class, and of course which helps 
to sustain that whole system of regal and papal 
usurpation which has so long cursed mankind. If 
such titles are to some extent still acknowledged 
in this country, they have either been thoughtlessly 
but unwisely used as mere epithets of courtesy, 
or they are the remains of old deep-rooted foreign 
habits, which, in spite of the uncongenial soil to 
which they have been transplanted, still maintain 
a sortof withered existence. It now, however, be- 
comes a serious inquiry, whether this practice, hith- 
erto seemingly unimportant, may hot be attended 
with danger to the institutions of the country. For 
Popery, it appears, is already taking advantage of 
this, as of all other weaknesses in our habits and 
customs, to introduce its anti-democratic system, 
and this too while it manifests in words great zeal 
in defence of democratic liberty. Let the democ- 
racy look well to this. 

Is it asked, to what extent should titles or names 
of distinction be abolished throughout the land, 
the answer is plain. Every title that merely desig- 
nates an office, is perfectly in accordance with our 
institutions, such as President, Secretary, Senator, 
General, Commodore, &c. So are letters after a 
name which designate the office or membership in 
a society, but titles of reverence, titles which imply 
moral qualities, such as Your Excellency, Your 
Honor, The Reverend, Rt. Reverend, Honorable, 
&,c. ; and letters which imply moral or intellectual 


APPENDIX. 


153 


superiority, I think it must be conceded are now 
not only useless but dangerous. There needs no 
law to abolish these gewgaw appendages to a name ; 
they must be left to the good sense of the individual 
who uses them, to discontinue them ; and fortu- 
nately they generally belong to intellectual men, 
who have minds capable of discerning the remote 
evils to which the practice leads, and patriotism 
enough to make a greater sacrifice than this occa- 
sion calls for to avert dangers which threaten their 
country. 

Will it be said that this is a little matter. No- 
thing is of little consequence that may endanger, 
however remotely, the civil liberty' of the country. 
Nay more, no practice is unworthy of reform, which 
continued may aid by its example in the surrender 
of Religious liberty into the hands of Popery. 


Note I. — Page 76. 

Compulsory Baptism. 

Perhaps Father Baraga was thinking of the fa- 
cilities afforded in Spain ill the time of Ximenes 
for administering baptism, when “ Fifty thousand 
(50,000,) Moors under terror of death and torture 
received the grace of baptism, and more than an 
equal number of the refractory were condemned, 
of whom 2,536 were burnt alive.” May our go- 
vernment long be “ too free ” for the enacting of 
such barbarity. 


154 


APPENDIX. 


Note J. and K. — Page 84. 

Priests control the Mob. 

If farther proof were wanting- of the fact of the 
supreme influence of the Catholic priests over the 
mob, it is opportunely furnished in the testimony 
on the trial of the rioters at Charlestown, (Mass.) 
Mr. Edward Cutter testified that the Lady Superior, 
in an interview previous to the burning of the con- 
vent, thus threatened him ; she said “ the bishop 
had 20,000 of the vilest (or boldest) Irishmen under 
his control, who would tear down the houses of Mr. 
Cutter and others ; and that the selectmen of 
Charlestown might read the riot act till they were 
hoarse, and it would be of no use.” 

But if any doubt is thrown over Mr. Cutter’s 
testimony because he is a Protestant, hear what the 
Lady Superior herself testifies ; “ I told him,” she 
says, that “the Right Reverend Bishop’s influence 
over ten thousand brave Irishmen might lead to 
the destruction of his property, and that of others.” 

Here we have the startling fact, acknowledged 
in a court of justice b^ the Superior of the convent, 
that the Bishop has such influence over a mob of 
foreigners, that he can use them for vengeance or 
restrain them at pleasure. The question that oc- 
curs is, How much stronger is it necessary for this 
foreign corps to become, before it may prudently 
act offensively against our noxious Protestant in- 
stitutions? The fact is established by Catholic 
testimony, that the Popish population is not an un - 


APPENDIX. 


155 


organized mob, but is moved by priestly leaders, 
Jesuit foreigners in the pay of Austria. They are 
ready to keep quiet or to strike as circumstances 
may render expedient. But exclusive of other 
proof, another most important fact is rendered cer- 
tain by this singular confession of the Lady Supe- 
rior, and that is Roman Catholic interference in our 
elections. Jesuits are not in the habit of slighting 
their advantages, -and the Bishop who can control 
ten or twenty thousand, or five hundred thousand 
men, as the case may be, for the purpose of destruc- 
tion and riot, can certainly control the votes of these 
obedient instruments! Will not American free- 
men wake to the apprehension of a truth like 
this ? 


Note L. — Page 87. 

Political interference of Popery. 

The kind of interference in the political affairs, 
of other countries by the Sovereign of Rome, may 
be learned from the following extracts from the 
Pope’s Proclamation against Don Pedro in which 
he thus speaks of Portugal. — He laments the defec- 
tion of “ That kingdom, cited, until now, as a mod- 
el of devotion and of fidelity to the Catholic faith, 
to the Holy See, and to the Roman pontiffs, our pre- 
decessors ; a kingdom which, as is meet, has already 
felt it an honor to obey its Sovereigns, distinguished 
by the title of Most faithful Kings. We confess that 


156 


APPENDIX. 


we could not at first believe what report and public 
rumor related upon enterprises so audacious, but the 
unexpected return to Italy of him who represented 
us in the said kingdom as Apostolic Nuncio, and 
the most positive testimony of many persons, soon 
convinced us that what had been previously an- 
nounced to us was but too true. 

“ It is then as certain as it is greatly to be de- 
plored, that the above-mentioned Government has 
unjustly driven away him who represented our per- 
son and fhe Holy See, commanding him to quit the 
kingdom without delay. But after so gross an in- 
sult offered to the Holy See, and to us, the audaci- 
ty of these perverse men has been carried still fur- 
ther against the Catholic Church, against ecclesi- 
astical property, against the inviolable rights of the 
Holy See. Considering that all these measures 
have been exercised, almost at the accession of a 
new Power, and in consequence of a conspiracy 
prepared beforehand, our mind is filled with hor- 
ror, and we cannot refrain from tears. All the 
public prisons have been opened, and, after having 
let those who were detained there go forth, they 
have thrown into them, in their place, some of those 
of whom it is written, Touch not my Anointed. 
Laymen have rashly arrogated to themselves a pow- 
er over sacred things; they have proclaimed a ge- 
neral reform of the secular clergy, and of religious 
orders of both sexes.’ , 

After enumerating various acts of rigor of the 
new government against those priests, monks and 


APPENDIX. 


157 


other ecclesiastics, who had taken an active 
part in the civil war, the Pope continues : — “ For 
this reason, venerable brethren, we expressly pro- 
claim that we absolutely reprobate all the decrees is- 
sued by the aforesaid government of Lisbon , to the 
great detriment of the Church, of its holy minis- 
ters, of the ecclesiastical law, and Holy See prero- 
gatives ; we, therefore, declare them to be null and 
of no effect , and express our most serious complaints 
against the audacious measures we have referred 
to ; we declare that in exercising the duties of our 
office, and with God’s help, we will oppose ourselves 
as a wall for the House of Israel, and show our- 
selves in the combat at the day of the Lord, as the 
interests of religion and the gravity of circumstan- 
ces may require .” 

lie hopes this low rumbling of the thunders of 
the Vatican will prevent his “having recourse to 
those spiritual arms with which God has invested 
his apostolic ministry,” namely anathemas, curses 
of excommunication, &c. And these are not the re- 
cords of doings of the dark ages, but are fresh from 
the papal throne, the acts of 1833. 


N o t e M . — P age 88. 

If any suppose that Popery meddles not with 
civil matters in this country, let them peruse the 
following extract of a letter from one of their mis- 
sionaries. 


14 


158 APPENDIX. 

“ Mr. Baraga to the Central Direction of the Leopold Founda- 
tion, dated L’Arbre Croche, October 10th, 1832. 

“ * * On the 5th of August, after partaking 

the sacrament of confirmation, the bishop called 
all the chiefs and head men of the mission, and 
made known to them some civil laws, which he 
had made for the Ottowas. The Indians received 
these laws with much pleasure, and promised so- 
lemnly to obey them. The missionary and four 
chiefs are the administrators of these laws. 

“ Frederick Baraga, Missionary.” 

Here is a specimen of the disposition of Popery 
to meddle in civil matters in this country where it 
has the power ; the Bishop is the propounder, and 
the Missionary one of the administrators of the 
civil laws. 


Note N. — Page 10 7. 

The poor , the illiterate, and the working classes, 
the most deeply interested in quelling riot and 
disorder. 

I have elsewhere hinted at the danger to the 
stability of our institutions of the mob spirit which 
has been manifested in different parts of the 
country. But I fear that the process of disorgan- 
ization, the gradual change which frequent riot 
necessarily works in the nature of government has 
not been duly considered by those whom it most 
deeply, most vitally concerns ; I mean the hard- 
working, uneducated poor. Let me endeavor to 


APPENDIX. 


159 


trace this process. What is the proper effect of 
our democratic republican institutions upon the 
various classes into which human society must ever 
be divided ? How do they affect the condition of the 
rich and the poor , the educated and the illiterate ? 
Equality, the only practicable equality, is their 
result ; not that spurious, visionary equality which 
would make a forced community of property, but 
that equality which puts no artificial obstacles in 
the way of any man’s becoming the richest or most 
learned in the state ; which allows every man with- 
out other impediment than the common obstacles 
of human nature and the equal rights of his neigh- 
bor impose, to strive after wealth and knowledge 
and happiness. True Christian republicanism, by 
its benevolent and ennobling principles, impels the 
wealthy and the educated to use their talents for 
the benefit of the whole community ; it prompts to 
acts of public spirit, to self-sacrifice, and to un- 
wearied effort to lessen the natural obstacles in the 
way of the poor and uneducated to competence and 
intellectual character, by affording them both em- 
ployment and education. The kindness and bene- 
volence thus shown to the poor beget in this class of 
our citizens, industry and mental effort. They feel 
that they are not like the proscribed of other coun- 
tries, they see that the way is equally open to all 
to rise to the same rank of independence in mind 
and condition, and they consequently are without 
the exciting causes of envy and ill-will and bitter- 
ness of feeling towards the wealthy and educated, 


160 


APPENDIX. 


which exist and produce these fruits in other and ar- 
bitrary governments. Society in its two extremes is 
thus knit together by a mutual confidence, and a mu- 
tual interest, for causes beyond human control are 
ever varying the condition of men. He that is rich 
to-day may be poor to-morrow ; and thus there is a 
constant interchange, a mingling of ranks, which like 
a healthful circulation in the natural body, begets 
soundness and vigor through the political body. 
The vicious, and voluntarily ignorant being the 
only portions of society naturally and justly exclu- 
ded from the benefits of this system. 

Let us now look at the condition of these same 
classes under an arbitrary government. In Austria, 
for example, the poor and illiterate are considered 
as the natural slaves of the wealthy and learned . 
These classes are perpetually separated by the arti- 
ficial barrier of hereditary right ; the line of sepa- 
ration is distinctly drawn, and in all that relates to 
social intercourse there is an impassable gulf. 
There may be condescension on the one part, but 
no elevation on the other. High birth, learning, 
wealth, and polished manners are on the one side, 
strengthening the hands of the arbitrary power that 
sustains them; on the other, low birth, ignorance, 
poverty, and boorishness, kept down by their intrin- 
sic weakness, generation after generation in irre- 
trievable subjection ; the upper classes knowing 
that their own security is based upon the perpetuity 
of ignorance and superstition in the lower classes. 
Now to make the change from republicanism to 


APPENDIX. 


161 


absolutism, what means would an arbitrary power 
like Austria be most likely to devise? Would she 
not attain her object entirely by the creation on the 
one hand, in the wealth and talent of this country, 
a necessity for employing physical force to hold in 
subjection the poor and illiterate ? And the pro- 
duction, on the other hand, of a class ignorant and 
unprincipled, and turbulent enough to need the 
very restraints the other class might be compelled 
to employ ? Are there any indications of such a 
change in this country ? We have a daily increas- 
ing host of emigrants, a portion of the very class 
used to foreign servitude abroad. How could Aus- 
trian emissaries better serve their imperial master’s 
interests, than by keeping these unenlightened men 
in the same mental darkness in which they existed 
in the countries from which they came, surround- 
ing them here with a police of priests, and shutting 
out from them the light which might break in upon 
them in this land of light, nourishing them for riot 
and turbulence, at political meetings, and for bully- 
ing at the polls those of opposite political opinions? 
And what would be the effect of such a mode of 
proceedings upon that class, who have acquired by 
lives of honest industry and studious application, 
wealth, and knowledge, and political experience ? 
Is not such a course calculated to drive them away 
from any participation in the politics of the country, 
and is not such seditious conduct intended to pro- 
duce this very result ? Will not men who have 
any self-Tespect, who have any sense of character, 
14 * 


162 


APPENDIX. 


turn away and ask with feelings of indignation, 
where is that intelligent, sober, orderly body of 
native mechanics and artizans, who once composed 
the wholesome, substantial democracy of the coun- 
try, and on whose independence and rough good 
sense the country could always rely, that well-tried 
body of their own fellow-citizens, accustomed to 
hear and read patiently, and decide discreetly ? 
And when they see them associated with a rude set 
of priest-governed foreigners, strangers to the order 
and habits of our institutions, requiting us for their 
hospitable reception by conduct subversive of the 
very institutions which make them freemen ; when 
they see them become the dupes of the machina- 
tions of a foreign despotic power, refusing to be 
undeceived, and madly rushing to their own destruc- 
tion, will they not from motives of self preservation 
be willing to adopt any system of measures, how- 
ever arbitrary, which will secure society from vio- 
lence and anarchy? When disgust at priest-guided 
mobs shall have alienated the minds of one class of 
the citizens from the other, we have then one oj 
the parties nearly formed, which is necessary for 
the designs of despotism in accomplishing the sub- 
version of the republic. And the other party is 
still easier formed. The alienation of feeling in 
the wealthier class, and their remarks of disgust, 
may be easily tortured into contempt for the classes 
below them, and then the natural envy of the poor 
towards the rich, will always furnish occasions to 
excite ,to violence. When hostility between these 


APPENDIX. 


163 


two parties has reached a proper height, the signal 
from the arch jugglers in Europe to their assistants 
here, can easily kindle the flames of civil strife. 
And then comes the dextrous change of systems. 
Frequent outrage must be quelled by military force, 
for the public peace must at all events be preserved, 
and the civil arm will have become too weak, and 
thus commences an armed police , itself but the 
precursor of a standing army. And which party 
will be the sufferer 1 All experience answers that 
wealth and talent are more than a match for mere 
brute force, for the plain reason that they can both 
purchase and direct it. The rich can pay for their 
protection, and soldiers belong to those who pay 
them. The man of talent is wanted to direct, and 
he also is retained by the rich. What then be- 
comes of the illiterate and laboring poor ? Reduced 
after ineffectual, ill-concerted resistance to the same 
state of perfect subjection that obtains in the 
“ happy Austrian empire ” It is the poor then, the 
poor and ignorant , not the rich and learned, that 
have every thing of hope and liberty to lose from 
the machinations of Austria. In a moral and intel- 
ligent Democracy, the rich and poor are friends 
and equals, in a Popish despotism the poor are in 
abject servitude to the rich. Let the working men, 
the laboring classes, well consider that their liberty 
is in danger, and can be preserved only by their 
encouragement of education and good order. 


164 


APPENDIX. 


Note O. — Page 117 . 

Dangers from a riotous spirit, and the kind of 

treatment due from Protestant Americans to 

Catholic Emigrants. 

All the topics which grow out of this momen- 
tous subject of Popery as their prolific parent, are 
of absorbing national interest, but no one forces it- 
self upon our consideration more imperiously at this 
moment than that which heads this note. For, 
unless I am greatly deceived, the waking up of this 
great nation’s indignation, the shaking off of the 
lethargy which has so long held in unaccountable 
stupor the senses of the people, which has shut 
their eyes and stopped their ears to the proofs of 
foreign conspiracy which every where surround 
them, the mighty gathering of all real patriots to 
the defence of their liberties, which the sounds of 
preparation from all quarters of the land but too 
strongly indicate, may be attended with effects dis- 
astrous to the cause of true liberty, may produce 
through excess or ill-regulated zeal, the evil which 
it is desirous to remedy. For excess even in fa- 
vor of right principles, doubles the amount of the 
evil which it attempts to cure. Excess of all kinds, 
whether in thought, word, or action, (oh ! that 
this could be impressed on every American heart,) 
is just so much gain to the side of Popery. I know 
not how prevalent is error on this point, but I am 
persuaded that it exists to an extent to make 


APPENDIX. 


165 


an American tremble for the permanency of our 
democratic institutions. 

Is there not a culpable acquiescence in the do- 
ings of a mob, if their violence is directed against 
some apparent or real irritating popular evil ? Is 
not the language of such acquiescence most dange- 
rous ? It amounts to this ; “ Although we are 
averse to mob law, yet on the whole there are cases 
where the sin is venial, and the character of the nui- 
sance it would abate justifies its violence.” Now once 
concede in a democratic community, a community 
which makes its own laws according to modes pre- 
scribed by itself, that an irresponsible minority may 
set at defiance these laws, and then let me ask 
where is government? It is prostrated. It has be- 
come anarchy, and on the ruins of social order will 
arise another form of government more or less ar- 
bitrary according to the more or less profound cau- 
ses which effected the destruction of the first. Of 
all forms of government, a truly democratic gov- 
ernment, while it is least obnoxious to the dis- 
turbing influences of mobs, can at the same time 
least of all bear the shocks of their turbulence. 
No events, therefore, that have occurred in the 
eventful history of the country, have so justly caus- 
ed alarm for the stability of the government, as the 
spirit of mob violence which has lately manifested 
itself so frequently in our large cities. We should 
do well to remember that we have secret and art- 
ful enemies busily at work, who can and will take 
advantage of this unnatural state of the public feel- 


166 


APPENDIX. 


ing, and who will not fail secretly to administer 
fuel, in modes in which they are perfectly familiar, 
to a diseased excitement so favorable to their views. 

We have in the country a powerful religious-po- 
litico sect, whose final success depends on the sub- 
version of these democratic institutions, and who 
have therefore a vital interest in promoting mob- 
violence. The saying of the German ambassador 
concerning the Papists, (quoted in the prefatory 
remarks,) is full of meaning, and should be con- 
stantly borne in mind ; it lets us into the secret of 
much of their manceuvering in this country ; “ they 
will he hammer or nails , they will persecute or he 
persecuted” Where they are in power they always 
persecute; when not in power and consequently un- 
able to persecute, they will be sure to conduct, 
either in so outrageous or mysterious, or deceptive 
a manner, as to rouse public indignation . They 
will contrive ingenious modes of irritation that shall 
draw upon them popular vengeance, and then all 
meekness and innocence, and resignation, raise the 
imploring cry of persecution. And how do they 
gain by these opposite modes 1 If they are strong 
enough to persecute, they will destroy their oppo- 
nents, in obedience to the openly avowed principles 
of their sect, by exile, by dungeons, and by death. 
If they themselves are persecuted in a Protestant 
community, (Protestant principles being in known 
direct opposition to persecution,) it is always by 
an irreligious mob, acting in defiance of Protestant 
principle , and unsustained by public opinion, and 


APPENDIX. 


167 


the reaction of Protestant sympathy for the sufferers 
on any such occasion, more than makes amends by 
its gifts for the injury sustained. Thus the very 
virtues of Protestants growing out of principles di- 
rectly antagonist to Popish principles, are made to 
work against Protestantism, and in favor of Popery. 
Do not Jesuits know the well known truth, that a 
sect is helped by a little persecution? Do they not 
now act upon a knowledge of it ? And should not 
Americans replenish their memory with it also, 
that they may most rigidly abstain from disorder, 
and discountenance every disposition to riot or vi- 
olence? Let them remember that the laws that 
govern them are their own laws, and they must not 
allow them to be broken. Let them suspect a Pop- 
ish plot to rob them of their liberties in every dis- 
orderly assemblage, and by good order, by firmness 
of resistance to every temptation to riot, defeat the 
designs of these worst enemies of Democracy. 

In close connection with this topic, is that of 
the kind of treatment which Protestant Americans 
should show to Catholic emigrants. On this sub- 
ject a volume could be written. I have space but 
for a few remarks. 

The condition of the Catholic emigrants that 
are daily pouring into the country from Germany 
and Ireland should awaken the strongest sympathies 
of Americans ; and in whatever aspect viewed, 
should enlist all their feelings of benevolence. Re- 
flect a moment who and what they are. We have 
read, and our own countrymen who have travelled 


168 


APPENDIX. 


and seen them in their native land, bear testimony 
to the effects upon the people of the grinding op- 
pressions of Papal government ; to the mental deg- 
radation, to the poverty, to the wretchedness of the 
vassals of despotism. And as if to prove to us 
what we might doubt on the authority of others, so 
sombre is their picture of human misery, the very 
subjects of foreign oppression are brought and 
placed before our eyes. See yonder ship slowly 
furling her sails. She approaches the city. She 
casts her anchor. Who are those that crowd her 
decks ? With eager eyes they gaze in one direc- 
tion. They see at length the far-famed land of 
liberty. Yes ; its name has been wafted even to 
their ears, and with the longings of captives for 
freedom they have broken away from slavery and 
sought the asylum of the oppressed. They land 
upon our shores. Look, Americans, see before 
you the fruits of papal education ! of papal care of 
the bodies and minds of its children. Filthy and 
ragged in body, ignorant in mind, and but too often 
most debased in morals, they fill your streets with 
squaiid beggary, and your highways with crime ; 
they are such a loathsome picture of degradation, 
moral and physical, that you turn away in disgust 
from the sight. But why should this be ? They 
are human beings, although oppression has blotted 
out their reason and conscience and thought. 
They are the progeny of Popery ; they are the vic- 
tims of its iron despotism. It is Popery that has 
reared them up in its own caverns of superstition. 


APPENDIX. 


169 


They exhibit before you the blighting effects of this 
scourge of the earth. It is Popery that has filled 
their minds with puerile fables, closed their mental 
eyes in the darkness of ignorance, fleeced them of 
their property by systematic robbery, kept them 
from the knowledge of their natural rights as men 
to liberty of conscience, and of opinion, extorted an 
abject obedience to their fellow-men, to blasphe- 
mous usurpers of the prerogatives of Deity. Their 
ignorance is their lasting, fatal curse ; their reason 
and conscience stifled at their birth, they are cast 
upon our care mere human machines, for the fell 
usurpers of God’s power have torn out of them 
their very minds. To think for themselves, that 
inalienable right of a rational being, is rebellion 
against their priest ; they read not, they understand 
not our charter of liberty. They love liberty, 
indeed, but what shape has liberty to men without 
minds? What perception of light has a sightless 
eye ? Their liberty, is licentiousness, their freedom, 
strife and debauchery. 

And now with what emotions should Protestants 
look on these suffering, deluded men ? In what 
channel should their sympathies flow ? They have 
already been beaten to the dust by tyranny. Is it 
for freemen to follow up the cruel blow of foreign 
tyrants? They have been brutalized by neglect ; 
shall they now be hunted by proscription ? Shall 
no Christian effort be made to light up again in 
their darkened bosoms the extinguished spark of 
humanity ? They are followed into our habitations ; 
15 


170 


APPENDIX. 


yes, Americans, they are pursued into your own 
asylum of liberty by their foreign oppressors, who, 
like hungry wolves, have ventured with unhallowed 
feet into the very sanctuary of freedom to grasp 
again their scarcely escaped prey. And have Amer- 
icans no compassion 1 Have they no courage 1 Will 
they not protect the oppressed ? Will they not inter- 
pose between them and their priestly oppressors, and 
say to the latter, “ Stand off; this is a land of free- 
dom ; these men are now American citizens. They 
have a right to American education ; to republican 
education; to Bible education. They have a right 
to the knowledge that they owe no allegiance to 
priests, that here there are no forbidden books, that 
knowledge here is not meted out in scanty drops to 
serve the purposes of power-grasping despots, but 
is spread out before them wide and deep as the 
ocean ; that American laws protect them from ec- 
clesiastical as well as civil proscription, from eccle- 
siastical as well as civil extortion, that they owe no 
obligation to pay an arbitrary tax of bishop or 
priest, that they have a right to know the amount , 
and the manner of disbursement , of every cent they 
are called on to contribute in church as well as 
state.” 

Will not Americans teach them these truths, 
and aid them to break the chains with which for- 
eign tyrants have bound them 1 or will they compel 
them, by proscription and persecution, or unfeeling 
neglect, to clan together around their priests, be- 
cause deserted by those who should, and who alone 


APPENDIX. 


171 


can, undeceive and enlighten them ? In the one 
case there is hope of incorporating them into the 
American republican family as useful fellow-citi- 
zens. In the other, there is the certainty of per- 
petuating a distinct foreign and hostile interest in 
the country, to distract its councils, to sully the 
peaceful character of its institutions, and finally to 
aid in the complete destruction of this stronghold, 
this last hope of Freedom. 

“but once put out thy (light,) 

Thou cunning’ st pattern of excelling nature, 

I know not where is the Promethean heat 
Thai can thy light relume.” 


Note P. — Page 131. 

Both political Parties intrigue for Catholic votes. 

Let neither political party throw upon its antag- 
onist the exclusive odium of courting this foreign, 
priest-dis( iplined band. There are some of both 
parties who must hide their heads with shame, when 
real Americans, the patriots of the country, disre- 
garding party name, shall turn their indignant eyfes 
upon this lurking enemy of liberty, and shall appre- 
hend the reality of this foreign conspiracy. Is 
either political party disposed to upbraid the other 
with tampering with Popery, or to congratulate 
itself that it has kept its own garments unspotted 
from the crime of this indirect treason? If either 
thus flatters itself, let it he dumb; let guilt stop the 


172 


APPENDIX. 


utterance of both. Both are deplorably, notoriously 
guilty. This is a truth that cannot and will not be 
denied. Both have bargained with these organized 
vassals of a foreign po\ver. Both in their eager 
recklessness to triumph over each other, have aided 
foreign despotism to prostrate at its feet the liberties 
of their country, the liberties of the world. All 
parties, religious and political, are suffering, and 
have yet much more to suffer from the evils al- 
ready produced by this their blind folly, by their 
culpable servility to priest-governed foreigners, 
their cowardly backwardness in not daring to drag 
into the light this covert treason, because, forsooth, 
it comes in a sacred garb, their wretchedly loose 
notions of tolerance, and charity and liberality, their 
shameful disregard of the consequences of their 
bargainings. — And is it indeed come to this? A 
nation of Protestant freemen, nurtured in Protestant 
principles, the only true principles of liberty, prin- 
ciples wrested from tyranny by the persevering 
valor of their fathers, the result of the intellectual, 
aye, and physical combats of centuries, the fruits 
of obstinately contested struggles with despotism, 
and superstition, and bigotry, struggles of ages 
against the united intrigues of kingcraft and priest- 
craft ; Americans, thus emancipated, having enjoy- 
ed the peaceful fruits of these blood earned truths 
for two centuries, at length grow careless of their 
treasure ; they sport with their liberty as if it were 
nothing worth ; they grow weary of guarding their 
happiness, they sleep on their posts, they settle 


APPENDIX. 


173 


down into quiet security. They have ships, and 
forts, and arms, and brave hearts to defend their 
shores, and so there is no danger, all is peace, for 
the battle has long since been won, they can now 
safely doff their armor, there is no further need of 
the watchings of the camp. Our enemies, they 
say, have in truth become our friends ; Kings are 
now Republican, and the Pope, yes the Pope, (his 
bulls and proclamations to the contrary notwith- 
standing,) we hope and believe has turned a Pro- 
testant Republican, at least in this country. — Let 
us be generous, say these descendants of ever jeal- 
ous sires, let us invite our former foes to partake of 
our hospitality. How noble the sentiment ! How 
will the world applaud ! let us show an example 
of liberality unparalleled. The invitation is ac- 
cepted, and they flock in countless thousands to 
our shores ; a motley band, the oppressor and the 
oppressed together, and their relations to each other 
too unchanged. They have needed no Trojan Horse 
to hide them from our too credulous eyes, we lead 
them openly into the midst of us. — They parade 
our streets with foreign banners,, already they flaunt 
them in our faces in. derision. They even threaten 
us with their vengeance, and we cower beneath 
their frown. Yes, we plead with them to spare us, 
we thank them for restraining their rod, we humbly 
confess the sins of our ancestors, we tell them our 
fathers were bigotted and fanatical , they were too 
prejudiced against these our regal and papal 
friends. 


15 * 


174 


APPENDIX. 


We their children, grown more liberal, will show 
our freedom from narrow prejudices ; we will make 
amends for past offences ; our papal friends shall be 
received with open arms ; we will even urge them 
to be the umpires in our family quarrels; we will be- 
seech them to educate our children in their foreign 
principles of passive obedience ; we will build for 
them their fortresses on our own soil, to attack our 
own slrong holds, and then we will trust to their 
mercy ; we shall then have delivered up to them all 
the keys of our house, and what will remain for us 
but to bow our necks beneath the foot of the Pope, 
and asking absolution for our own sins, and our 
father’s sins of long rebellion against his rightful 
sovereignty, humbly beg a legal charter for our coun- 
try, and a consecrated king for our throne ? 


Note R. — Page 122. 

Popish experiment on the Military of the country. 

The experiments of Popery in various parts of 
the country on the ignorance or credulity, or 
apathy of the people, are every day, I might say 
every hour, more manifest, and they are prosecuted 
with a boldness, with an audacious defiance of 
American habits, and the feelings of American Re- 
publicanism, truly astonishing. Yet upon reflection, 
is it so astonishing that a tyranny of such inex- 
haustible resources of cunning and artifice, back- 


APPENDIX. 


175 


ed by the treasures, and the open encouragement 
of the arbitrary governments of Europe, should be 
more than ordinarily bold 1 For if success attends 
the advance of these arch intriguers against our 
Protestant habits and institutions, high honors and 
pecuniary rewards await them at home : if detec- 
tion at any time overtakes them from the sudden 
waking of their victim, and his restive efforts to 
break off the bands that they would spider-like 
softly bind upon him, they have a retreat from 
punishment in their own country. A new expe- 
riment, another step forward in the march against 
our freedom, and to all appearances at present, a 
successful one has been tried at the West, at St. 
Louis, in the consecration of the Popish cathedral. 
The account is from a Popish Journal, called the 
Catholic Telegraph. They shall have the benefit 
of their own recital. 

“ The Cathedral of St. Louis is 134 feet long 
by 84 wide. There are 8 rows of pews, 25 in 
each row, calculated to contain at least 8000 per- 
sons. There are two magnificent colonnades at 
opposite sides in the body of the church, consisting 
of five massive pillars, of brick, elegantly marbled, 
and each four feet in diameter. 

“ The altar is of stone. It is only temporary, 
and will soon be superseded by a superb marble al- 
tar, which is hourly expected from Italy. 

“ The church it is said has already cost $42,- 
000. It is presumed that about $18,000 more will 
be required to finish it, according to the origi- 


176 


APPENDIX. 


nal and magnificent design of its founders ; so that 
the entire cost of the building and its furniture can- 
not be less than $60,000. 

“ The consecration took place on the Sabbath 
Oct. 26, 1834. 

“ At an early hour, 7, A. M. on the day of con- 
secration, four Bishops, twenty-eight Priests, twelve 
of whom were from twelve different nations — and 
a considerable number of young aspirants to the 
holy ministry, making the entire ecclesiastical corps 
amount to fifty or sixty, were habited in their ap- 
propriate dresses. As soon as the procession 
was organized , the pealing of three large and 
clear-sounding bells, the thunder of two pieces of 
artillery raised all hearts, as well as our own 
to the Great Almighty Being. 

“ When the holy relics were moved towards 
their new habitation, where they shall enjoy an 
anticipated resurrection — the presence of their 
God in His holy tabernacle, the guns fired a 
second salute. We felt as if the soul of St. 
Louis, Christian, Lawgiver and Hero, was in 
the sound, and that he again led on his victori- 
ous armies in the service of the God of Hosts, for 
the defence of his religion, his sepulchre, and his 
people. 

“ When the solemn moment of the consecration 
approached, and the Son of the living God was 
going to descend for the first time, into thenew re- 
sidence of his glory on earth, the drums beat the 
rev}lle, three of the star-spangled banners were low - 


APPENDIX. 


177 


ered over the balustrade of the sanctuary, the ar- 
tillery gave a deafening discharge. 

“ The dedication sermon was preached by the 
Bishop of Cincinnati. During the Divine Sacri- 
fice , two of the military stood with drawn swords , 
one at each side of the altar ; they belonged to a 
guard of honor formed expressly for the occasion. 
Besides whom, there were detachments from the 
four militia companies of the city, the Marions , the 
Grays, the Riflemen , and the Cannoneers from 
Jefferson Barracks , stationed at convenient distan - 
ces around the church. 

“ Well and eloquently did the Rev. Mr. Abell, 
pastor of Louisville, observe in the evening dis- 
course, alluding to his own and the impressions of 
the clergy and laity, who were witnesses to the 
scene; * Fellow-Christians and Fellow-citizens! 
I have seen the flag of my country proudly floating 
at the mast-head of our richly freighted merchant- 
men ; l have seen it fluttering in the breeze at the 
head of our armies, but never, never did my heart 
exult, as when I this day behold it, for th eflrsi time , 
bow before its God ! Breathing from infancy the 
air which our artillery had purified from the infec- 
tious spirit of bigotry and persecution, it would be 
the pride of my soul, to take the brave men by the 
hand, by whom these cannons were served. But 
for these cannons, there would be no home for the 
free, no asylum for the persecuted.” 

What are the reflections of an American on an 
occurrence like this? What must they be to one 


178 


APPENDIX. 


who has ever felt his pride of country stir within 
him, when in foreign lands he has beheld the de- 
graded slaves of despotism bow in like manner 
before the altars and idols of heathenish supersti- 
tion, awed into seeming reverence by the military 
array which always accompanies the imposing cer- 
emonial of the Popish church 1 But the military 
were only a guard of honor ! Yes ; this is the soft 
name given to this despotic chain, the musical 
sound to charm us away from scrutinizing it, and it 
will be sufficient, doubtless, to drown its harsher 
clanking in our torpid ears. The guard of honor , 
that universal appendage of kings and sacred des- 
pots, is a serviceable band. It not only helps to 
swell a procession by its numbers, but with the glit- 
ter of its arms, and accoutrements, and gay banners, 
H adds splendor to the pageant of a heathen ritual. 
But, reader, it has an essential duty to perform. 
Its duty is to enforce the ceremonies of worship upon 
all present. Do you doubt this duty of the guard 
of honor? The writer will give his own experience 
of the duties of the guard of honor. I was a stran- 
ger in Rome, and recovering from the debility of a 
slight fever, I was walking for air and gentle exer- 
cise in the Corso, on the day of the celebration of the 
Corpus Domini. From the houses on each side 
of the street were hung rich tapestries and gold 
embroidered damasks, and towards me slowly ad- 
vanced a long procession, decked out with all the 
heathenish paraphernalia of this self-styled church. 
In a part of the procession a lofty baldichino, or 


APPENDIX. 


179 


canopy, borne by men, was held above the idol, the 
host, before which, as it passed, all heads were un- 
covered, and every knee bent but mine. Ignorant 
of the customs of heathenism, I turned my back 
upon the procession, and close to the side of the 
houses in the crowd, (as I supposed unobserved,) 
I was noting in my tablets the order of the assem- 
blage. I was suddenly aroused from my occupa- 
tion, and staggered by a blow upon the head from 
the gun and bayonet of a soldier, which struck off 
my hat far into the crowd. Upon recovering from 
the shock, the soldier, with the expression of a de- 
mon, and his mouth pouring forth a torrent of Ital- 
ian oaths, in which il diavolo had a prominent place, 
stood with his bayonet against my breast. I could 
make no resistance, I could only ask him why he 
struck me, and receive in answer his fresh volley 
of unintelligible imprecations, which having deliv- 
ered, he resumed his place in the guard of honor , 
by the side of the officiating cardinal. 

Americans will not fail to observe in the pre- 
cious extract of the discourse in which the priest 
gives vent to his feelings of exultation upon seeing 
our national flag y the star-spangled banner, hum- 
bled in the dust before the Pope, that with the cun- 
ning of his craft he flatters the soldiery, and in a 
sermon professedly to the God of Peace, and in de- 
dicating a temple to his name, he is inspired with 
no loftier feelings of soul than this, “ it would be 
the pride of my soul , to take the brave men by the 
hand, by whom these cannons were served.” Why ? 


180 


APPENDIX. 


Is it such a brave act to touch off a cannon ? Or 
was the imagination of the priest revelling in the 
dream of seeing the military power of the country, 
at a future day, at the beck and service of the Pope, 
and his Austrian master? 


THE MASK THROWN ASIDE. 

A charge of hostility to American institutions, 
against any sect or class in the community, is a 
very serious one, and only requires evidence to 
support it, to draw upon all its doings the watchful 
eye of American freemen. Is it asked, what evi- 
dence should you think sufficiently strong to sub- 
stantiate the charge ? I answer, the general prin- 
ciples of the sect would be sufficient, but its own 
declarations of hostility would certainly substantiate 
the charge. If a Presbyterian journal, in comment- 
ing on the trial of the rioters at Charlestown, should 
make remarks like the following, the evidence 
would doubtless be consideted complete : 

“A system of government which admits a feeling of alarm in 
the execution of the laws from the vengeance of the mob, 
which Mr Austin’ (the prosecuting attorney,) “ distinctly al- 
lows to he the case — a vengeance exhibited by letters to the 
public officers and threats to the public authorities— may be 
very fine in theory , very fit for imitation on the part of those 
who seek the power of the mob in contradistinction to justice 
and the public interest , but it is not of a nature to invite the 
reflecting part of the world , and shows at least that it has 
evils. A public officer in Eqgland, who would publicly avow 
such a fear of executing his duty and carrying into eff-ct the 
law of the realm, ought and would be thrust out of office by 


APPENDIX. 


181 


public opinion. Tins one fact is condemnation of the system 
of American institctions, confirmed lately by numerous other 
proofs .” 

Now, could hostility to our institutions be more 
strongly expressed ? and were Presbyterians or any 
other Protestant sect, thus boldly to avow its political 
antipathies, every political journal would seize upon 
this evidence of treason, and trumpet it through the 
whole country. Why then are they now silent ? 
This treason is actually uttered, nor is it less humi- 
liating, or less dangerous that it is flung in our 
faces by a set of foreigners in the employment and 
pay of a foreign government, instead of native citi- 
zens. The very words I have quoted are from the 
Catholic Telegraph, a Roman Catholic journal, 
edited and published at Cincinnati. Let it be borne 
in mind too, that a Catholic journal is under the 
supervision of the Bishops, who exercise a rigid 
censorship over it, that it speaks the authorized 
sentiments of the sect, and we shall then perceive 
something of the importance to be attached to these 
anti-republican declarations. They are indeed a 
precious, an invaluable testimonial to the People, 
of the duplicity of their professed friends. Every 
where in the land hitherto, Papists have been loud- 
est in professions of attachment to American repub- 
lican institutions. They have now thrown off the 
mask. They unblushingly declare, that “ our sys- 
tem of government, though very fne in theory , is not 
of a nature to invite the reflecting part of the world,” 
in short, that it is an experiment that has failed : 

16 


182 


APPENDIX. 


that “ American institutions stand condemned by 
a single fact in the trial in Boston , and by nume- 
rous other proofs” And what has brought out this 
precious confession ; what has occurred to make 
it a fit time to lay aside the disguise in which they 
have till now deceived the democracy of the coun- 
try 1 What has produced this sudden revolution 
in their opinion of our form of government ? Let 
us look into this matter. 

A body of native citizens is excited to indigna- 
tion by rumors, (whether true or false alters not the 
case,) that an act of foul play, such as the history 
of those nuisances, (convents,) in all countries have 
abundantly furnished, had occurred in the Charles- 
town nunnery. This mob, instead of being met with 
efforts to appease it by immediate explanation, as 
would have been the case in any Protestant semi- 
nary in the land, (for Protestants have no secret 
mysteries in their discipline,) this mob, I say, is kept 
for days in an excited state by mysterious manoeu- 
vering, on the part of the Catholics, and by irrita- 
ting threats from the Superior of the Convent, that, 
20,000 foreigners under the orders of the Bishop 
would take vengeance upon the citizens, if they 
dared to commit any injury upon the Convent, and 
this threat was uttered in sight of Bunker's hill. 
Under this provocation the outrage was committed. 
And is it a matter of surprise 1 I know of no one 
who justifies the illegal violence in burning the 
Convent, but I unhesitatingly say, that the feeling 
of indignation which animated the populace, was a 


APPENDIX. 


183 


just and proper feeling. It was roused by the be- 
lief, that a young and helpless female had been ille- 
gally and cruelly abducted from her friends, and 
subjected to a secret tyrannical punishment. The 
feeling, I say under this belief, was not only hono- 
rable to the Charlestownians, but had they viewed 
such an outrage with indifference, they would have 
shown themselves unworthy of American citizens. 
Their error, (and it cannot be defended, however 
it may be palliated by the gross insult which they 
received,) consisted in suffering their just indigna. 
tion to flow in an illegal channel, and instead of 
rallying round the laws, and strengthening them 
by a strong expression of public opinion at a special 
meeting of citizens, they leaped the bounds of law 
and committed a crime which the Papists are trying 
every possible means to cause to react in their favor. 
But allowing that no palliating circumstances attend- 
ed the act of the rioters, that no excuse could be 
pleaded for them as acting under the impulse of 
the most stinging insult that could be given to any 
people by a foreigner ; what have these acts to do 
with our “ system of government,” or with “ Amer- 
ican institutions?” In England, forsooth, they 
manage things better. There are never riots in 
England ! London, Manchester, Bristol, I suppose 
were never agitated by riots ! Paris, Lyons, Mar- 
seilles, Nismes, St. Petersburg, Brussels, Frank- 
fort, Rome, Constantinople, none of these places 
under various systems of government, are ever wit- 
nesses to riots ! ! But this Popish enemy to our 


184 


APPENDIX. 


institutions may say, it is not the riot but the threat- 
ening letters sent to the prosecuting attorney to 
intimidate him in his duty, that tells against the 
government. Indeed, and who wrote the letters? 
Is it quite certain that they were not the production 
of some Jesuit to fan an excitement which was so 
likely to be turned to the advantage of his schemes ? 
Threatening letters are much in use in a certain 
Catholic country called Ireland, under a monarchi- 
cal system of government. But suppose these let- 
ters were not written by Jesuits, but were the pro- 
duction of some wicked, or thoughtless person, what 
then ? Is our form of government the cause of the 
writing of anonymous threatening letters ? Would 
any other form of government prevent this evil of 
so alarming magnitude in the eyes of the Catholic 
Telegraph? Can it be prevented in England, or 
in any other form of government in the world ? 
Yes, there is one government which could probably 
prevent it. It is one in which the Inquisition is 
established, and by means of which, aided by the 
confessional, all that is considered necessary for the 
good of the church , could be brought to light, or 
rather to the ears of those most interested in know- 
ing all secrets that bear upon their own power. 
How soon we shall be prepared for such a change 
of government to suit the designs of these busy, 
foreign emissaries, depends on the continuance of 
the character for sagacity, intelligence, and virtue 
of the American people. 

Whatever doubts some may have hitherto had 


APPENDIX. 


185 


in regard to the existence of a foreign conspiracy 
in the country, I think the case is now become too 
plain to need further proof. Indeed so bold are 
these foreign emissaries in the utterance of their 
anti-republican dogmas, so unblushing in their 
attacks upon our institutions, that we are often led 
to exclaim what does this mean? Are these men 
fools, or madmen ? or are they so strong in their 
support from abroad, that they feel secure in beard- 
ing American freemen in their own homes ? The 
latter supposition alone satisfactorily explains their 
conduct. Austria is now playing a desperate game 
against liberty, for the safety of her own throne, and 
for that of her allies. It is the last hazard, and her 
object is gained if she can destroy the influence of 
our prosperity upon the people of Europe, a pros- 
perity the natural result of our popular free institu- 
tions; and this latter object is effected if by any 
means, no matter how, riot and disorder can be 
produced in this country, to be pointed at as the ef- 
fect of republican government. Americans ! Friends 
of liberty ; Friends of order ; examine this subject, 
and decide with your usual sagacity and discretion. 
You have a busy, a crafty, a powerful, a dangerous 
set of foreign leaders, controlling and commanding 
a foreign population, ignorant and infatuated, inter- 
mixed with your own population, and who at a sin- 
gle signal from the Pope or from Metternich, when 
the cause of despotism shall require the deed, can 
spread disorder and riot through all your borders. 

Shrink not, Americans, from looking at the truth. 

16 * 


186 


APPENDIX. 


You may boast of your peace and prosperity, you 
hold them both at this moment , at the mercy of 
Austria ! She has a disciplined band of foreigners 
in the midst of you, who in any season of excite- 
ment, she can make to fill your streets and dwel- 
lings with fear and confusion. She may not think 
it prudent or expedient just now to exercise her 
power, but she has the power, through Popish priests,. 
who hold in checlc, at their pleasure, the elements of 
discord, and whose favor you are compelled humbly 
to conciliate as the price of your tranquillity. 
And this power is daily increasing, not merely by 
foreign immigration, and foreign money, but, with 
the deepest shame be it spoken, by the assistance, 
direct and indirect, of Protestant Republican Amer- 
icans, who, with a facility most marvellous, fall into 
every snare and pleasant baited trap that Popery 
spreads for them. 


*** As the last sheet was printing, an article 
of intelligence was received, bearing importantly 
on the subject of this volume. Bishop England, 
the busy Jesuit, whom I have had occasion before 
to notice, has just put forth an address to his Dio- 
cese, at Charleston, on his return from Europe, 
from which we make the following extracts : 

" During my absence I have not been negli- 
gent of the concerns of this Diocese. I have endea- 
vored to interest in its behalf several eminent and 
dignified personages whom I had the good fortune to 


APPENDIX. 


187 


meet ; and have continued to impress with a convic- 
tion of the propriety of continuing their generous 
aid , the administration of those societies from which 
it has previously received valuable succor. In Paris 
and at Lyons I have conversed with those excellent 
men who manage the affairs of the Association for 
propagating the Faith. This year their grant to 
this Diocese has been larger than usual. I have 
also had opportunities of communication with some 
of the Council which administers the Austrian 
Association ; they continue to feel an interest in our 
concerns. The Propaganda in Rome, though great- 
ly embarrassed, owing to the former plunder of its 
funds by rapacious infidels, has this year contribu- 
ted to our extraordinary expenditure ; as has the 
holy father himself, in the kindest manner, from 
the scanty stock which constitutes his private allow- 
ance ; but which he economizes to the utmost for 
the purpose of being able to devote the savings to 
works of piety, of charity, and of literature.” 

“ The prelates of the Church of Ireland, are 
ready, as far as our hierarchy shall require their 
co-operation, to give to them their best exertions in 
selecting and forwarding from amongst the nume- 
rous aspirants to the sacred ministry that are found 
in the island of saints, (Ireland,) a sufficient num- 
ber of those properly qualified to supply our defi- 
ciencies. I have had very many applications, and 
accepted a few, who, I trust, have been judiciously 
selected 

We have here additional confirmation, if any 


188 


APPENDIX. 


were wanted, that in countries where Church and 
State are closely united, and where consequently 
every religious association , (totally unlike our reli- 
gious associations, which have no connection with 
the government,) is directly connected with politi- 
cal objects, there is a great and special effort mak- 
ing to effect certain objects in the United States. 
We have no less than three great societies, all 
formed to operate on this country. THEY say re- 
ligiously , but let Americans, who know that Aus- 
tria makes no movement which is not intended for 
political effect, judge whether religious benevolence 
towards this benighted land, or a deeper and more 
earthly feeling of political self-preservation prompts 
her “ continued feeling of interest in our concerns 


























♦ 


































































* 















































i 







































* 



























% 















































